Radiohead - OKC (OK Computer - Radiohead)

Member Name: FilmstarUK

Product:	OK Computer - Radiohead
Date:	13/09/00 (124 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Life-affirming

Disadvantages: None

Radiohead have produced an album which goes totally against the grain. Although it is not the most accessible of albums to start with this is compensated for many times over by its endurance as a record that will stay with you for the rest of your days. In fact the difficulty of the record is what makes it so exciting. It refuses to settle easily in to the background, demanding to be heard. Aware of its own content, it does not attempt to conform to any record label's desires for radio-friendly jingles but rather grabs the listener by the earlobes and forces you to sit down, shut up and take stock of your life and situation.

In the making of a seque to their successful second album, 'The Bends', many assumed that another classic rock album was due, propelling Radiohead in to the league of the stadium rock bands. OK Computer could not be much further from this description. Progressive and experimental, it manages to combine elements of jazz, trip-hop and psychadelic genres without at any time sounding as if the band is abandoning its roots. Where the 90s previously appeared to be sounding the death knoll for guitar music, with the growth of dance, drum and bass and a wide variety of musical sub-cultures, OK Computer turned the tide on these and suggests that on the contrary, these musical styles can compliment each other. Songs range from the frightening 'Climbing Up the Walls' - filled with the sound of 16 violins tuned at quarter tones from each other and a guitar line which can only be described as what sounds like an elephant reaching its untimely demise; to the mellifluous 'The Tourist' - a song which, when it is over, makes the listener feel like they have been on holiday.

Thom Yorke once said, when describing the bands name, Radiohead, that it reflected the idea that "you buy because you are told to buy, you consume because you are told to consume... you just become like a synapse in a chain of other peoples i
deas... it's [about] the passive acceptance of our environment". This also explains the core message of OK Computer. As in 'Fitter Happier' - an interlude that uses the same computerized voice as Stephen Hawkings to read the lyrics, listing a series of chillingly delivered clean living tips: "Not drinking too much/ Regular exercise at the gym/ (three days a week)/ getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries" - the idea is that the world in which we live and the environment around us has more power to shape us than we are sometimes aware of. OK Computer is the warning bell.

Radiohead is sometimes criticised as depressing, I would disagree, although the message of the album is one of the sadness of the world in which we live, it continuously talks of escape from this world : "I am born again" (airbag), "One day I am gonna grow wings" (Let Down), "Pack, and get dressed/ Before your father hears us/ Today, we escape" (Exit Music), "When I am king you will be first against the wall/ And your opinion which is of no consequence at all" (Paranoid Android). It leaves the listener revitalised, we are not alone in our desire to escape, there is hope.

Summary: