Radiohead - The Bends (The Bends - Radiohead)

Name: carlmcq

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Product:	The Bends - Radiohead
Date:	09.09.05 (390 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: An all-time great album

Disadvantages: What disadvantages?!

When 'Pablo Honey' arrived to the world in 1994, many lesser witted people dubbed Creep a one hit wonder and Radiohead little more than a stop-fill gap between the early nineties Nirvana-led grunge revolution and the mid-nineties Brit-pop era. How wrong they were.

Their second album 'The Bends' designed and moulded the band into a superpower from which they never looked back. And the most serious question asked or topic discussed about this album in years gone by?? Not the lack of 'filler' tracks or 'radio-friendly' music, but whether 'The Bends' or 'OK Computer' is not only Radiohead's best album, but one of the best albums rock music has ever produced.

Opening track 'Planet Telex' helps us on our epic journey, and acts as an excellent compliment to the following three tracks, all of which are huge pieces of music.

Title track 'The Bends' is a huge favourite of mine with Thom Yorke's creaking, wandering voice 'I need to wash myself again, to hide all the dirt and pain'. Pablo Honey showed subtle complexities in the band's work, and this song alone shows how they developed these 'subtleties' into breakdowns and build-ups in music that are hard to achieve.

The following two tracks, 'High & Dry' and 'Fake Plastic Trees' are beautiful, heart-felt tracks. Anthems for a rainy day it could be said, or anthems for a sunny day some others may argue, with their hazy, laid back rhythms that hypnotizes the listener into a state of awe with regards to this music. Furthermore, these two songs showcase Yorke's epic talent with his eerie, echoing vocals that can within an instant break hearts, and as latter songs will confirm, then shatter window panes in anger.

'Bones' starts off, in my opinion, in a REM-esque style of music. However, Yorke comfortably manages to differ between Michael Stipe's style and his own, authenticating Radiohead's own style and showing that this is brilliant, original music that we are listening to.

'(Nice Dream)' produces a harmony of backing violins and vocals, until a stop-start, enraging solo from Jonny Greenwood breaks loose, for allbeit 30 or so seconds, until this juxtaposed style rounds off with the fading out of 'nice dream' being sang.

'Just' is just simply a great song, and an example of the anger-style of vocals that I mentioned a few paragraphs back with regards to Yorke's vocal styles. The build-up of quiet verses and loud choruses is very much a trademark of rock music. And all rounded off by another provoking guitar interlude by Greenwood. And one final word on this song - an excellent video accompanies it, as I'm sure many of you are aware - why was that man lying on the ground?! One of lifes genuine unanswerable questions!!

'My Iron Lung' may be seen by a few people as being slightly weak compared to a number of tracks on the album, which is fair enough, until an obscure, but certainly attention-grabbing interlude about two minutes into proceedings appears. It's an explosion of musical passion that catches the listener unaware, making for great alternative music.

'Bullet Proof...I Wish I Was' fades in and out, with progressing ease with each listen - music for the brain to relax to. 'Black Star' holds many of these similarities, apart from a more aggressive chorus, showing the bands encouragement to chop and change tempos and rhythms without consent from anyone else, which helps show the band's confidence and maturity, regardless of this being only their second album.

'Sulk', I must confess, is a track I have probably listen to the least. This is no disrespect to the song itself - it's a more than adequate track...but maybe it has something to do with the track that follows it...

'Street Spirit (Fade Out)' is the closing track, and is something that many bands will be afraid to do - have a huge single at the end of an album. This eerie, haunting, awesome piece of music is very much an anthem of the band, but then again, as I come to a conclusion, so are tracks like 'High & Dry', 'Fake Plastic Trees' and 'Just', to name just a few, and this is tribute and proof that Radiohead are genuinely one of the biggest bands on the planet. Their consistent skill at producing epic music is second to none. With this being merely their second album as well, and knowing what came after it...it's almost frightening to imagine the amount of talent in this band...

And what was it I said about people saying 'Creep' was a one-hit wonder?!?! I beg to differ somewhat...

Summary: A great album for everyone's CD collection