RADIOHEAD For The Curious Newbie
If you’re just beginning to explore the music of Radiohead, here are a few notes from someone who grew up with them.
I recently discovered, much to my delight, that my thirteen year old niece is a Radiohead fan. I was thrilled that she’d found them and curious about which song or attribute might have pulled her in. The news did not inspire such enthusiasm with my sister, however. She has always had an aversion to Thom Yorke’s voice, so has been suffering through this trend on my niece’s playlists.
Radiohead has always been that kind of band: love ‘em or hate ‘em. For those like my sister who have no taste for the Kool-aide, I can relate. I have a hard time with Rush because Geddy Lee’s voice is not especially pleasing to me. (I really like YYZ though, lol!) This has riled tempers in the past, but I haven’t wavered. Neither has my sister. I guess that’s what makes music and individual preferences so interesting.
For those of us who do happen to have a Radiohead shaped hole in our hearts, there is nothing else that can fill that void. There are no worthy substitutions for this particular band.
I tried to imagine what it must be like for anyone who has just discovered Radiohead in the past five years or so. There is such an overwhelming amount of content! Each album seems so defined into an era of my life that I couldn’t even approach the music without the memories attached. Where would I begin if I hadn’t grown up with them?
That is what I was thinking when I remembered how engaging it is to travel with someone local, with someone who is from whichever place I’m exploring. For instance, visiting San Francisco for the first time with someone who grew up there brought the city to life for me. I discovered hidden art, tasted exquisite food and had adventures I’d never have had otherwise. Perhaps I could do that for my niece, musically speaking. Maybe I could be her guide through the wonderfully dark and magical soundscape woven by the brilliant lads called Radiohead.
Back In Time…
It’s hard to imagine how it was back in time, back in a place where much of the music we listen too all the time did not yet exist. Trying to understand how exciting and fresh the Beatles must have been is not possible; you had to have been there. You had to have lived during a time when there was no rock and roll. At least not what most of us would consider when we think of it today. There was no classic rock or progressive rock, there was no hip-hop, grunge, EDM, or metal. Even if we can see a band’s impact on popular music, we struggle to imagine life before they made that impact.
To be able to grow up with a band or an artist, to hear them grow and develop album by album, is a unique experience permitted primarily by your particular timeline on this lovely planet. I am fortunate to dwell within a timeline that allowed me to partake in Radiohead’s kaleidoscopic marvel for the ears.
Even though I lived through it, it’s still difficult to remember what it was like before Radiohead…
The Albums: Part One
In 1992 grunge was well underway, although not quite showing up on the main stream radar just yet. Rock bands of the era were producing straight forward rock; they fancied the basics without too many bells and whistles. Radiohead arrived on the scene in this ilk like any other band of the era.
They had a hit called Creep that was moping about everywhere you listened. They could have been a one hit wonder. Their album, Pablo Honey, was good but not extraordinary. It didn’t really stand out. Singer Thom Yorke would eventually refer to this era as Radiohead “buzzing like a fridge.” I don’t think it was as bad as that (I played my CD a lot), but there wasn’t much there that could stand the test of time. There wasn’t anything rare or special.
What was there were the beginnings of strengths the band continually built upon throughout their career; the melodies and harmonies in You; the grace and grit in Creep; crisp simplicity that treats vocals like an instrument in Thinking About You; the fluid transition from chaos into order in Anyone Can Play Guitar. These sparks made them stand apart from the other bands that one might find on a standard nineties rock playlist. You might say the clues were there for anyone who happened to be looking.
The Bends came next; in my mind, it still has its foundation in fridge buzzing, but there are beautiful examples of foreshadowing as well. In tracks like Bullet Proof … I Wish I Was and Street Spirit (Fade Out) there were glimmerings of the future. Little teasers of what was to come. The album has other great songs too, don’t get me wrong.
The Bends was one of about twelve cassette tapes that accompanied a friend and I on a cross country road trip in the nineties. We rarely had a radio signal, so those tapes got plenty of air time. I’ll always love the album for the nostalgia, and it was still better than most any other rock album of the era. It only pales in comparison to what was coming next.
The bar was about to hit the ceiling.
With their concept album, OK Computer, Radiohead went next level. They had finally found their sound. It was as though they discovered one of those crazy elaborate Dr. Seuss machines; they fed it nineties alt rock, which it bounced around through a series of twists and turns until it spat out something completely new and refreshingly beautiful. They somehow managed to take chaos and structure and merge them in a way that is pretty to the ear. They connected rock to an ethereal and haunting realm I’d never accessed prior. It was completely of its time and an instant classic all at once.
Karma Police was the hit that lured in new listeners, but the album is packed with quintessential Radiohead. Paranoid Android, Exit Music (For A Film), Climbing Up the Walls, Lucky and The Tourist all set the bar for what a Radiohead song was capable of being. OK Computer set the stage for reoccurring dramas between satire and melody or the juxtaposition of social commentary with a distractingly beautiful aesthetic. Complex musical arrangements and machines mixed together as though they were as tried and true as your grandma’s chocolate chip cookie recipe.
When a band releases something as monumental as OK Computer, people are bound to notice. Radiohead was flung into the spotlight. While many yearn for the fame and attention, Radiohead shied away from it. It semmed to be on the verge of destroying Thom Yorke. After having lost Kurt Cobain, watching Meeting People is Easy was almost too much to bare. I feared that the band would crumble under the pressure. I thought we might loose them. But my fears were quieted on a lovely day in October.
In autumn of 2000 Kid A was released. I recall clearly that magical adventure of listening to the album for the first time. I was initially a bit unsure, like a fawn attempting to stand for the first time. I opened my mind, sat back and let the experience take over. This was not an ordinary album; there were textures and feelings that seemed as though they had escaped a dream. Anyone who found OK Computer exhilarating was about to be sent into orbit.
With Kid A, Radiohead truly became a band of nuances. To fully appreciate it, you should put on headphones, lay back, close your eyes and take a trip in your mind. It is a phenomenal journey with surprises around every corner.
Like the fluttering of butterfly wings, layering of the softest kind ushers us into this electric world. After a digital introduction, the rumbling intensity of National Anthem takes off like a rocket; it breaks through the atmosphere and floats into the swirling tornado of strings in How to Disappear Completely. I sometimes get that turning tickle in my tummy when the strings surround me, like I’m on a carnival ride. The ambient Treefingers lets us recover, floating weightlessly. The soundscape built in Optimistic and In Limbo literally sounds like we’re exploring the album’s artwork, it’s a soundtrack for rummaging through this foreign place that’s a little scary. It is as though we’ve been shrunk to microscopic to explore the soil biome; we encounter the mycelia and roots, the jagged stones and nematodes, and the other alien forms that reside in dark, secret places.
I’d never felt music actually pick me up and carry me through another dimension until Kid A. The album is a 47 minute window into an altered state. It doesn’t even seem like an album as much as it does a sculpture of sound. Intricate details capture the ear, sometimes soft and silken and sometimes ragged and jarring.
The duality of angelic harps and organs with the laments of a suicide letter in Motion Picture Soundtrack culminates perfectly an epic pairing of supple, soothing music with unnervingly dark lyrics. The album is beautiful but emotionally costly.
In 2001 came essentially the second half of Kid A. Amnesiac is more grounded in reality; we aren’t exploring new worlds as much as we are looking deeply into our own. The album opens with Packt Like Sardines In a Crushed Tin Box, a song about disappointment and disillusion with modern life. Then we take an abrupt turn into Pyramid Song, imagining death in the most beautiful way, hearing kinetic ghosts call out from within swelling strings. Perhaps not the most lighthearted beginning, and the album doesn’t relent.
These themes run throughout; the weight and burden of reality, the darkness in humanity and the inability to change it, and a ceaseless longing for peace are all wrapped up in a gloriously muted package. Even the album’s rockers, Pakt and I Might Be Wrong, seem slowed and softened, as if dipped in amber.
The album is just lovely, start to finish. Its texture is more uniform than Kid A, but it makes just as memorable an impression. The ghostly beauty of Pyramid Song and the velvety threat of Knives Out play in perfect balance to the glum commentary of Dollars and Cents and the taunting You And Whose Army? The tense simplicity of Hunting Bears leads sparsely into the trippy confusion of Like Spinning Plates before the album closes by melting into the lulling paranoia of Life In a Glasshouse. It’s a rollercoaster, but in slow motion.
The two albums were officially joined on 2021’s KID A MNESIA. Whether alone or together, the project is a masterpiece. It is wildly impressive, especially considering these albums had come off the heels of OK Computer, which completely changed the landscape of rock and roll forever.
Where could they possibly go from here?
Hail To the Thief is maybe my favorite Radiohead album. This always surprises me because upon first listen I was underwhelmed. I thought the album was lackluster compared to OK Computer, Kid A and Amnesiac. But I was wrong. It took a few years for me to truly appreciate the album; I fell in love with it song by song.
But I suppose I’ll save that thought for Part Two…
RADIOHEAD For The Curious Newbie
Great article, I love the idea of a 'music guide'!
I'm afraid Radiohead lost me as a regular listener after 'OK Computer', but you've successfully challenged my perceptions and I'm going to give 'Kid A' another try.
Tim - challenge69.substack.com