"Where do we go from here....?" (The Bends - Radiohead)

Member Name: molemanh

Product:	The Bends - Radiohead
Date:	13/03/01 (48 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Essential, compulsive listening

Disadvantages: Indelibly scarred 'head as "depressing"

Following the largely indifferent reaction to 1993’s Pablo Honey, Radiohead’s explosive The Bends (1995) capitalized on the brilliance merely hinted at by their debut and propelled the Oxford five-piece towards the stratospheric heights secured by OK Computer (1997).

The pulsating guitars and suffocating paranoia of the album’s title track inaugurate a quartet of arresting, emotionally-charged songs and an intoxicating atmosphere relentlessly sustained by an enchanting 12 track opus.

A disarming bass drum anticipates the bitter, abandoned pleading of “High & Dry”, while the aching beauty of the song’s “Don’t leave me high/Don’t leave me dry” refrain showcases lead singer Thom Yorke’s tremendous vocal range.

The weary, barely-suppressed self-loathing of “Fake Plastic Trees” only serves to escalate The Bends already simmering temperature. That their perfection-seeking attempts to get this song “right” threatened to split the band is tangible. As a counterpoint, the lyrics underline Radiohead’s rarely-acknowledged, caustic humor: “He used to do surgery for girls in the eighties/But gravity always wins…”!

“Bones” epileptical guitar intro ushers in a catalogue of physical illnesses (metaphors for mental breakdown?) before climaxing with Yorke’s heart-wrenching testimony to regret: “I used to fly like Peter Pan/All the children flew when I touched their hands”.

The brief respite provided by the dejected “Nice Dream” shatters in the intensity and swirling guitars of Jon Greenwood and Ed O’Brien on “Just”. But even this fails to prepare the listener for the sheer force of “My Iron Lung”. Nirvana’s influence is evident both in the track’s thundering guitar assault and
Yorke’s Cobainesque “We’re too young to fa
ll asleep/Too cynical to speak” conclusions.

Yorke’s vocal repertoire is effortlessly demonstrated again on the haunting “Bullet Proof…I Wish I Was” leading seamlessly into the album’s hidden jewel, the perfectly-measured “Black Star”.

The lethargic, almost exhausted opening of “Sulk” underscores the smoldering tension summoned –somehow- by it’s electrifying chorus, reminiscent of earlier tracks.

Radiohead bequeath one of their most accomplished songs to the close of The Bends. By the time the palpably claustrophobic “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” grinds to its sombre crescendo, the band’s eerie harmonising proves almost hypnotic. Moreover, it seems highly significant that an album characterized by despair, resentment, dislocation and exclusion should conclude with the words –however indiscernible- “immerse your soul in love”.

The Bends falls into that rare category of album that instantly reminds you of when and where you first heard it. By turns, it charts an exhilarating, draining, cathartic but always sublime journey with a troupe of musicians just beginning to harness their vast, dazzling talents.

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