Roller-Coaster Ride Of An Opinion. Very Different This Time Round. Please Read. Caution. (The Bends - Radiohead)

Name:

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Product:	The Bends - Radiohead
Date:	10.12.02 (23 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: -

Disadvantages: -

"Jill Murphy asked me to write about one of my favourite things to help her celebrate her fourth anniversary of cancer-free living and to remind ourselves of all the nice things in the world. It takes more muscles to make a frown than a smile you know. If you'd like to join in, whether you've only just joined dooyoo, or you've been here ages, you're more than welcome. Just write about one of YOUR favourite things, make your title "A Favourite Thing: [your choice]" and include this paragraph at the foot of your opinion. And post before Friday, 9th August."

Well, she didn't ask me to do that? But you know what, who actually cares? This girl has obviously been through a lot and I've seen family members taken by cancer so I dedicate the following to all the sufferers of cancer out there and the people who work so hard daily to find a cure. It WILL happen.

Onto the op then. Well, I've decided to make this a bit different this time. Instead, of the usual track by track analysis that eventually gets monotonous and boring halfway through I'm going to write an opinion that you won't get tired or bored of- that you'll want to finish reading. So, bear with me if you find any of the following strange, funny, different or just plain weird. One thing's guaranteed, you're in for a ride...

So, I come home from school on a Friday. I've done all my homework, the huge pull of exams is over and I am absolutely gobsmacked. I had thought of a free period of this for ages- a time where I could just mess around and, well waste my time doing things I couldn't do otherwise. The problem was that I couldn't think of anything to do. I had booked a ticket to Harry Potter 2 for the weekend, I wouldn't be able to bear the travesty of the Celebrity Big Brother 2 final the food was cooking in the microwave, all before 7:00 p.m. !

Dear oh dear, I thought, I'm such a boring, ord
inary person. Stripped of my Tom Cruise-style cockiness (as I was at home and it was "behaving" time), I was getting friggin' bored to death. I tried everything to excite myself- I listened to Green Day's Longview four times, I even listened to that Las Ketchup song, thinking it would want to make me hit something. But even when that goddamn annoying chorus came in for the 5th bloody time, I didn't feel the need to shout or scream or do anything at all. For the first time in my life, I was at absolute peace (funny what good exam results can do, heh heh!). I moved to the computer.

I had downloaded Radiohead's Ok Computer a couple of days ago. I wrote, in my opinion, a blast of an opinion (still no crown though) and it was when I read the comments section that I realised Radiohead's The Bends.

A prolific member (frequent reader too, thanks man) called Bones told me he enjoyed my op so much he wanted me to write an opinion on this. Which is why I am here, for cancer reseach and sufferers and for that dooyoo member Bones. I had owned Radiohead's The Bends for ages. I had just never thought of writing about it before. To me, it just wasn't one of those records, like Pinkerton. It was just a set of perfect, immaculately arranged and sometmes original rock numbers with ironic, satirical and world-weary lyrics. By all means, it was an enjoyable album but it just didn't stand out from the post-grunge indie crowd (i.e. Feeder, Ash, Foo Fighters) at the time of listening.

And the big revelation is... (cue faux drum roll) that my opinion has changed. And the even bigger revelation is... (cue piano trills) that it's only changed very little. So, sorry to disappoint any Radiohead fans out there, after all this is my opinion and not yours, but The Bends is just... Oh, I'll just break it down like this:- (!)

At its core, The Bends is a rock album. Not an indie album, or a metal album but a good o
ld-fashioned rock record that relies more on persona, look and demeanour than tunesmith and melody. On the exterior, the big Nirvana-referencing riffs like Just (You Do It To Yourself) and Street Spirit (Fade Out) may make this look like typical post-grunge fodder. However, a few more listens reveal a good-old fashioned musical agenda on this album's interior. The tunes and melodies are pitched at mid-70s glam rock, Pink Floyd strummers and (of course) post-Kurt Cobain grunge. It is, like Ok Computer, full of ideas. But where this effort loses out is in its sheer lack of coherency and how it just simply doesn't sound THAT original. What it certainly isn't is the Ok Computer of indie.

The tunes are fantastic. The lovely Egyptian piano chords of opener Planet Telex meld wonderfully with singer/guitarist Thom Yorke's moody vocals, the thrash-metal of the title-track is one hundred times more effective (emotionally) than Radiohead's previous "grunge" song, Creep (shudders at the mention of the song). And while Just (You Do It To Yourself) shamelessly plagiarises the riff of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, one can see how Radioead have built on that jaded formula by hearing the juddering electronica, guitar pyrotechnics and complex arrangements that were all but missing from Kurt Cobain's masterwork (to some, in my opinion it's All Apologies). Then comes Black Star and High And Dry with their Britopping melodies and soaring, anthemic choruses that beg for your attention.

But for every Just, you have a Bones and for every High And Dry you have a Fake Plastic Trees. You see, while Radiohead come up trumps with a few undeniable gems on this record- some tracks just seem unoriginal or plagiarise shamelessly. It's as if on some songs, Radiohead aren't being themselves, they're being U2 (Fake Plastic Trees), Pink Floyd (Bones) or Oasis (Nice Dream). Undeniably, the tunes on these songs are heart-renderi
ngly ppowerful but they just don't seem as original as I'd expect Radiohead to be, like on tracks like Paranoid Android, No Surprises and The Pyramid Song. It's not so bad, while Radiohead have stolen just snippets (like Cobain did on Nirvana's Nevermind), they haven't done in consistently through the course of one album (Sum-41's Does This Look Infected comes to mind).

That's really my only qualm. Other tracks like the lighters-aloft emotive strums of Bullet Proof... I Wish I Was and the spasmic, jazzy/metalish My Iron Lung show Radiohead at their weird and cool peack. My Iron Lung's framework starts out. Beginning with a jazzy riff, hushed vocals I expect something ordinary. But, this is Radiohead we're talking about and no surprises (no pun intended), the song is mashed into the kind of metal that would make Queens Of The Stone Age looks like Limp Bizkit.

However, to this day it is Just that impressed me the most. It's the blindingly catchy chorus of "You do it to yourself, just you". It's one of those lovely, memorable moments that you just feel cannot be topped (and on this record, it never is). Just like when Rage Of The Machine screamed "I won't do what you tell me to" or when Rivers Cuomo screamed "Goddamn those half-japanese girls", it's a heart-lifting moment of coolness that only goo music can bring.

So, The Bends isn't the best album in the world but worth a listen even if it is surprisingly unoriginal (for Radiohead, that is) at times.

I really hope you enjoyed this opinion. If you did (or didn't), drop me a line and tell me how I can improve etc. I always love a good chat. To end, I feel I should come back to the beginning so that this whole new radical change in opinion writing for me is brought together full circle. Kudos.

I dedicate the following to all the sufferers of cancer out there and the people who work so har
d daily to find a cure. It WILL happen.

Summary: