Airbag
Paranoid Android
Subterranean Homesick Alien
Exit Music ( for a film)
Let Down
Karma Police
Fitter Happier
Electioneering
Climbing Up the Walls
No Surprises
Lucky
The Tourist
OK
Computer
Released 06/16/97 UK, 06/17/97 Canada, 07/01/97 US
Produced by Radiohead and Nigel Godrich.
OK COMPUTER was nominated for the 1998 Grammy Award for Album
Of The Year and won the 1998 Grammy for Best Alternative Music
Performance. OK COMPUTER, Radiohead's third album, is the bombastic
follow-up to 1995's sleeper hit THE BENDS, which left critics
and listeners as impressed with the band's ability as they were
curious about their potential. In spite of its technological-sounding
title and apocalyptic sci-fi themes, OK COMPUTER is firmly grounded
in the rock verities. Waves of guitars rage beneath the haunting
melodies and near-hysterical fits of singer Thom Yorke. This
complex, intense swarm of guitars is held aloft by a solid,
inventive rhythm section and an impressive array of piano and
keyboard textures.
"Paranoid Android" is a six-minute-plus epic with alternating
time signatures, wild dynamic shifts, drama and adrenaline to
spare. "Let Down," with its double-tracked vocals and rhythmic
throb, may give a brief glimpse back at Radiohead's past, but
at no point is OK COMPUTER anything but a hurtle forward.
Notes:
Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's."
Rolling Stone 5/13/99, p.65
Ranked #2 on Spin's list of the "Top 20 Albums Of The Year."
Spin 1/98, p.86
Ranked #2 in the Village Voice's 1997 Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll.
Village Voice 2/24/98
Included in Q Magazine's "50 Best Albums of 1997." Q Magazine
1/98, p.114 Ranked #2 in NME's 1997 Critics' Poll. New Musical
Express 12/20-27/97, pp.78-79
Ranked #2 on Melody Maker's list of 1997's "Albums Of The Year."
Melody Maker 12/20-27/97, pp.66-67
4 Stars (out of 5) - "...OK COMPUTER - a stunning art-rock tour
de force - will have you reeling back to their debut, PABLO
HONEY, for insight into the group's dramatic evolution..." Rolling
Stone 7/10-24/97, pp. 117-118
8 (out of 10) - "...Unlike their majestic models U2, Radiohead
take on techno without switching instruments or employing trendy
producers....As with post-rockers Tortoise, Laika, and Seefeel,
Radiohead have a fuzzbox or two and obviously know how to use
'em..." Spin 8/97, pp.112-113
"...unlike anything I've ever heard....I definitley know it
isn't good for me, and I'm certain it says more about my life
than I'd like....in terms of composition and performance, it's
very impressive. Radiohead have excelled themselves. They've
seen the future." Melody Maker 6/14/97, p.49
"...Shrouded in wafting guitars, swoony rhythms, and moody-blue
strings, it shrugs off mosh-pit conventions for a poignant delicacy
and breadth, with Yorke's cracked-throat voice the album's melancholy
center....For all of Radiohead's growing pains...their aim--to
take British pop to a heavenly new level--is true..." - Rating:
B+ Entertainment Weekly 7/11/97, pp.65-66
Rolling Stone review
Radiohead's third album is one of the best rock records of the
year in large part because it is the most inscrutable. "OK Computer"
vigorously defies fast analysis, flip judgment and easy interpretation.
Singer Thom Yorke doesn't pretend to be likable about it, either.
"Ambition makes you look very ugly," he sneers amid the "Bohemian
Rhapsody"-style seizures of "Paranoid Android," a slur that
works both ways if you have major objections to arty sonic clutter
and prog-rock pretensions. But there is nothing linear about
cracking up. "OK Computer," ostensibly a concept LP about a
zombie world of hard law and infernal software, is a song cycle
about serial fear and suffocating routine, laid out in mad leaps
of melody, tempo and pathos that slowly accrue their queer beauty:
the bleak, R.E.M.-ish clatter of "Electioneering," the languid
dive of Yorke's croon in the melted-Beatles carol "Lucky." Radiohead
try too hard to be nonconformist -- as if they're embarrassed
to just be *pop* -- but ambition hardly makes them ogres. It
makes them special. (RS 776/777)
