RADIOHEAD | OK COMPUTER
Hailed as one of the greatest albums of all time, OK Computer is a trippy ride through a world fraught with rampant consumerism, emotional isolation, and political malaise. It carries with it a prescient insight into the mood of 21st-century life. While still rooted in melody and accessibility, the band pushes boundaries to create a futuristic sound that is equal parts inspiring, despairing, pleasing, and melancholy. The overall essence mixes moments of awe and wonder with anxiety.
It’s known as the Dark Side Of The Moon for the 90’s generation and the album crosses boundaries of anxiety, joy, ecstasy and unease. Much of Radiohead’s experience making the album was about outdoing the promising potential of their sophomore album The Bends. After being hailed as prospects for musical greatness, Yorke and co wanted to craft an album that was accessible yet alienating at the same time. “Paranoid Android” was a baffling six minute plus lead single, abandoning everything about conventional songwriting. It has three main sections mirroring the operatic sensationalism of Bohemian Rhapsody.
“Exit Music” sends chills down the spine continuously, nervous, passionate, and direct with it’s European chord progression and melody. There are many climaxes on the album, and Yorke hits one early in the track list when he sings “rules and wisdom choke you” in a jarringly extrodinarly vocal moment. It would seem hard to imagine any other band following this up, yet the album continues to bemuse and amaze and it pours out.
“Karma Police” lifts the Beatles Sexy Sadie almost directly for its chorus. Radiohead are known for not hiding their influences, as we’ve clearly seen on their biggest smash Creep, which was a play on The Hollies track “The Air That I Breathe.” The track however is much more complex than an of its influences, as it breaks up into guitar deterioration by its ending after Yorke’s cry that he’s lost himself.
“Climbing Up The Walls” is a nightmarish musing about stalkers and serial killers, perfectly at home with the rest of the distress the album highlights. “I am the pick in the ice…we’re friends till we die.” “Let Down” and “Airbag” provide moments of uplifting sentiment and make the listener feel hopefully enthusiastic. We start to see how much the band has in their bag of tricks to draw from.
The album’s dividing track “Fitter Happier” is a cold robotic collection of random information Yorke had scribbled down from his journeys. The computer voice often mistaken for Stephen Hawking is the Macintosh speech tool Yorke found so emotionally disconnected he wanted it to serve as the centrepiece to the record.
OK Computer as a whole is all about tone and balance. The artwork is a collection of abstract collages of airport signs and airplane capsules. It’s cover is a white scribbled highway scene that reflect the turbulent disquietness of the music. It feels unclear and smudged, echoing the turmoil that underlies the songwriting.
The album isn’t bleak enough to self-implode, or congenial enough to come across as fun. It straddles an undefined area that we all somehow understand. This is what so many great albums do – they accurate highlight the highest and lows of our own existence. All humans wrestle with the personal internal fight between commotion and serenity, and OK Computer soundtracks this kind of duality.
“Lucky” is one of Yorke’s favourite songs and was amazingly captured in one live take. Greenwood’s guitar work is raucous and stiff, but can easily move anyone to tears as he underpins Yorke’s constant yearning for serenity among chaos. “No Surprises” is the best example of beauty in the destruction as the band evokes a children’s playfulness amidst lyrics of carbon dioxide, landfills, and bruises that won’t heal. The album closes with a sombre meditation about travelling to fast to stand. All the intensity and tension has made for a rollercoaster ride in emotion and it’s time to sit still with its effects. The lyrics “Idiot, slow down, Slow down!” perfectly force the ride to a stop, pulling on the breaks to a much needed point of cease at this carnival of intensity.
THE Paranoid Android
1 oz cognac or brandy
1 oz vodka
1 tbsp caper berry pickle brine
2 tsp simple syrup
2 springs fresh dill
cherries or caper berries
Combine all ingredients into a shaker with ice and shake for vigorously for ten seconds. Strain into rocks glass and garnish with the berries.