OK Computer - Radiohead

For quite some time now I was wondering why there are no great artists/music/albums these days. Well after I had my first job, those fantastic years of engineering, college and even school of hard core music had waned waned down gradually. And also there used to be good music at that time - the pinkfloyds, direstraits, metallica, yanni, kenny g etc - rich in quality and variety and I had stopped.

listening to western music, concluding that not much new and innovative is created now a days.

I dont like hip hop, rap and the so called hard-core metal, except may be for the melodic metallica.

Soon realized that I had missed a great band all these days. It was radiohead.

I heard some songs in youtube and was impressed.

Straightaway purchased 2 albums - ok computer and rainbows.

Music is awesome. Thom Yorke is too good. The way he croons, make faces, hums and shouts is great. He is the backbone of Radiohead and his voice is terrific.

It gives a high that no other band is capable of giving - may be except for pink-floyd and metallica. A hard core pink-floyd fan I am, and the songs like - run like hell, comfortably numb, another brick in the wall, the show must go on- these are some of the timeless gems that are unpralleled and untouched. No competition. Same with some of the metallica gems like enter sandman, nothing else matters, unforgiven etc.

However if one wants to experience something of the same intensity or beyond and something in a different direction with no less intensity, it has to be the radioheads. This new band came to my rescue as I was getting thirstier and thirstier for new music and the music maniac in me was almost dying.

I could fine that strange feeling you get in pink-floyd, the enigma's beat at times, the metallica's high

and ofcourse there is that uniqueness to this band which means that its original and new.

I can't play this at home becuase others feel noisy and irritating.

So the only way I hear this great band is when I am driving alone and blast the car-stereos to rev up my adrelaine. Earphones are of no use to this kind of music becuase that will cause head-pain. Loud speakers in an enclosed room gives you that incredible high and satisfaction that nothing else will. You will submerge in an ocean of blissful vibration for sure.

I am yet to try - the bends, amnesiac and other albums of the same band.

To all those music lovers who have never given a try to radiohead- Please give it a try. I am sure you will love it. To those who have already heard, I am sure you would agree to what I wrote.

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Radiohead’s third and probably best album ''Ok Computer '' is a direct progression from their previous album ''The Bends’. It’s a depressing but oddly compelling album and leaves you feeling depressed and wrung out. It’s a slow, spacey album, which leads you lovingly down the dark abyss of despair. …One step at a time. It kicks off with.

Airbag : A rather innocuous beginning to this album with its very own brand of dry humor but it’s a taste of things to come.

Paranoid Android: Thom's original choice for the opening single for this album. Thom relates an incident when he walked into a Los Angeles bar filled with yuppies drugged out on cocaine. He said he was ''surrounded by parasitic groupie types and pretentious California posers.” Their behavior in the bar is the inspiration behind this song. This song is a microcosm of the album and sets the tone for the rest of the album. I love the sneer in his voice when he mocks the lady at the bar by singing

''Ambition makes you look pretty ugly,

Kicking and squealing Gucci little piggy ''

And the grating in his voice when he mimics her subsequent rant.

Subterranean Homesick Alien: A song of alienation, of longing and hope, though the mood of the song rarely reflects hope. I always imagine it as a dirge, lamenting upon the soullessness of our walled in, constricted lives.

Exit Music [For A Film]: This is one of the best songs in the album and appears during the final credits of the movie Romeo and Juliet. I like to call this a nervous song with lots of spite thrown in. It’s a very depressing song and you really feel the tiredness and futility when they sing

''We hope your rules and wisdom choke you

And now we are one

In everlasting peace

We hope that you choke, that you choke''

Let Down: A beautiful song.

Let down and hanging on

Crushed like a bug in the ground

Let down and hanging around

Shell smashed

Juices flowing

Wings twitch

Legs are going

Don't get sentimental

It always ends up drivel

You get the feeling don’t you?

Karma Police: This is probably the most accessible song in the album and also the most hopeful. It’s a funny song and the name was inspired by a cartoon which asks the Karma police to” Arrest this man”. The video is also a pretty good one and reinforces the idea of karma and the subsequent idea of retribution overtaking the tormentor.

Fitter Happier: The total intonation is in a emotionless computer like voice. A song grieving the monotony of our life and the predictability of our reactions .Not exactly the best phase of the album but it'll do.

Electioneering: A very listenable song about power politics and the ethics of gain philosophy. A pleasant number to listen to, but it does not work for me any more. But it’s more of a breather, an appetizer before the main course, which are the next two songs in this album.

Climbing Up The Walls: A song of loneliness and depression .Its the call of the little voices in your head that awaken the demon within. A song, which blurs the line of your personality and your identity. This is a very claustrophobic song should be

listened in solitude. A very frightening song, which leaves you feeling hopeless and lost. This is the kind of song that makes you want to cut your throat and watch as your blood stains the white carpet making beautiful patterns in it. That’s what you want to do when they sing the refrain...

''So lock the kids up safe tonight

And shut the eyes in the cupboard,

Do not cry out or hit the alarm

You'll get the loneliest feeling that

Either way you turn,

I'll be there

Open up your skull,

I'll be there

Climbing up the walls''

No Surprises: The word that best describes this song is inevitability. This one is a masterpiece; its slow beat and the piano accompaniment leave you with a sense of utter despair and a feeling of futility. Imagine a shipwrecked, drowning man, in his last moments, having lost all hope, withdrawing his flailing arms and letting go knowing the inevitability of impending death. That’s the kind of mood this song evokes and I really wouldn’t recommend this song unless you want to really wallow in self-pity. It’s way too frightening for anything else.

Lucky: Another neat song but its not as good as the previous two but a very good one in its own right. It evokes a feeling of standing on the brink of an abyss with one leg outstretched but with a hope that the breeze is blowing towards you and that if you are going to fall, you are going to fall to the safer side.

The Tourist: The song laments the speed with which we lead our lives with the advise to

Slow down

Idiot, slow down and asking where the hell we are moving at ''A thousand feet per second''

A nice song to end this emotionally draining album and like all great albums the arrangement of songs is wonderful. Listening to the tracks in any other order is sacrilege it’s a very hypnotic album and takes some getting used to. But I certainly recommend that you get your hands on it right away.

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What can I say about the best band in the world?

I bought this album because I listened to my ex boyfriend sing covers for radiohead and simply fell in love with them.

Thom Yorke's melodic voice will captivate and hypnotize you.

You will find it easy to lose yourself to their music and https://lyrics.

Karma Police is definately my all time favourite Radiohead song, simply because of the lyrics ''this is what you get, when you mess with us,'' which for me gives me a sense of identity in the world as an angry youth.

Buy this album, especially if you travel it's good on the road. I also recommend The Bends.

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Well, I'd love to give a completely original, controversial opinion on this album, disagreeing with the majority. Unfortunately, I'm just going to say what virtually every review has said on this album - it is fantastic. The pretence that was really starting to show itself in the alternative rock genre at this time clearly had no effect on Radiohead - the album is quite obviously a conveyance of a whole range of ideas and emotions.

Style

Radiohead's previous album to this, The Bends, was a mind blowing classic, loved by millions across the world, hailed as 'intelligent music'. It was difficult to believe that this would be succeeded by an equally, possibly even greater classic. The music still contains similar qualities to those of The Bends, taking and improving on some of the experimental sound effects used on the album.

OK Computer has, and in fact is a completely unique style of its own. To place it in any existing genre undermines the originality of the album. However, there are traits similar to those of The Doors, Jim Morrison always having been a major inspiration and role model for Thom Yorke.

Lyrics

I'm sure there is endless meaning to this album, although to elaborate on this would be to guess - as with all Radiohead music, lyrics could be interpreted in any number of ways. Some of the best lyrics on the album are those of Paranoid Android, my favourite of which being the opening two lines:

Please could you stop the noise I'm trying to get some rest?

From all the unborn chicken voices in my head?

(Is Yorke talking about the amount of eggs he has eaten?!)

Vocals

Thom Yorke's vocals are, and have always been, an acquired taste, not conforming to those of today's 'recognized' qualities. They are indeed unique, suiting the music superbly. Yorke's use of falsetto is phenomenal yet not over-used. His vocal range as a whole is superb ranging from lower-tone tracks like exit music (for a film) and Lucky, to very high-tone tracks such as Paranoid Android and No Surprises. He appears to be able to switch from one end of the vocal scale to the other with remarkable ease.

Overall

It seems to be a common thing that people find music like Radiohead's depressing. Admittedly the music does have many pessimistic qualities, but to me this is the music that actually uplifts me. In fact, I find the more mainstream music more depressing than I do Radiohead.

If you are not familiar with Radiohead, I strongly recommend you buy this album. If you like Radiohead but have not got this album, buy it now. To new Radiohead listeners, the music does take some time to get used to. You need to get to know the music and understand the style. It is not music for everyone but definitely worth a try.

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There are so many ways to take OK Computer, so many ways to interpret the lyrics and melodies, that I couldn't possibly hope to produce anything here that will cover the way you, yourself, will feel about this album. Everyone I know who has listened to the album in any depth has had a unique and different interpretation of it to my own. All I can do is offer my opinion.

For me, the real beauty of Radiohead does in fact lie in this myriad of possible meanings Thom Yorke is trying to express. I say Yorke deliberately because to me he is the real driving force behind Radiohead, that makes them a band worth listening to. Johnny Greenwood's music is superb, yes, but there hasn't been a band I've come across in the last decade that says so many things to so many people.

OK Computer is the best example to date of this ''double life'' that Radiohead lead. It opens with Airbag, a song I would never have expected from the group having just come from The Bends. The first impression, and one that lingers, is that Yorke is deliriously happy. He's exhilerated, alive and glad to be sharing this world with the rest of us. Radiohead? The same band who brought us Street Spirit? You might not think so, and at first I thought I'd bought a Celine Dion CD by mistake, but no, this is the change in direction which OK Computer took. The album varies in tone not only from track to track, but within each song itself. You only have to look to the next track, the near-seven minute epic Paranoid Android, to see a ''song'' so wild in it's mood swings that at times you're not sure whether your CD player is tripping. I hadn't heard anything on this scale since Bohemian Rhapsody, and in many ways it's a similar premise - the highs, the lows, and the desperate feelings inbetween. For me, this is the ultimate Radiohead track and it encapsulates the whole feel and purpose of the album. Whether the track order is deliberate or not, I don't know, but the pendulum-like alternation between ''happy'' and ''sad'' continues through pretty much the whole of the album.

Subterranean Homesick Alien really lifts me up - it's one of those songs that irrationally makes you smile, a bit like Boom Boom by the Outhere Brothers - yet straight away, you're brought back down to sweet Mother Earth with the depressives favourite, Exit Music (For A Film). These two tracks are perhaps the closest the album comes to The Bends, but the distinction remains. Whereas the previous album was mostly rock, OK Computer is rock with a different infusion of genres on each track. There's jazz, blues, orchestral and indie influences jammed into there, and undoubtedly a few more I don't know myself.

I've heard that kind of comment a million times before, and it always puts me off an album - but rest assured, there are no zany jazz riffs in the middle of really good guitar bits, as the blend is smooth and cool. In my experience the one track that popularly sums up Radiohead is No Surprises. If there's been a single in the last twenty years - no, ten, to allow for The Smiths ;) - that has something to say to everyone who listens to it, I'd like to know about it. Everyone has that feeling that they're different, that everyone else are the ones with the problems, and people should be more their way. No Surprises is superficially mocking the contentment of Middle England, and many critics describe it as simple (and maybe it is, and I've been listening to it too much ;p), but that story can be told a million different ways to say something about everyone's life. ''Such a pretty house and such a pretty garden'' - how old were you when you realised that (that isn't what you want, but what you're going to get)? OK Computer is a schizophrenic album that many times leaves me reaching for the skip button.

Personally I can't take it all in one dose. Some days, I want the reasonless euphoria of Airbag. Other days, I feel like getting drunk and down to No Surprises. Whichever way I'm feeling, there's something on here for me. The comparison with The Bends must be made, really, and in my opinion the earlier album edges OK Computer slightly. That said, OK Computer is a must for all Radiohead fans. For those who have not heard any of their other work, I would liken them musically to any of the mid-90s indie bands but with a harder edge, and lyrically to The Beatles and The Smiths.

The words are the real beauty of Radiohead, and what makes them my undoubted top group of the 90s.

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