The title of Radiohead's second album, The Bends, references the painful condition suffered by divers who ascend too quickly; a fitting image for the band's state of being following their unexpected rise to fame on the back of 'Creep,' a song they famously resent, and a grueling tour in support of it. With their sophomore release, makes a strong, uncluttered statement about who they really are. The spirit of experimentation with sound features more prominently. Thom Yorke's voice is a haunting and vulnerable instrument as he explores the emotional imagery of his lyrics. The music plays with contrasts; loud and soft, dirty and clean; and layers of noise and effects to create dynamic and evocative experiences. The Bends doesn't yet add the electronic textures of later albums, but it's a clear evolutionary step toward the sound perfected with OK Computer and the result is an amazing piece of work.
![Bends Bends](/uploads/1/2/3/8/123835678/582786081.jpg)
Matt and ben play. As with other reissues in this series, this Collectors Edition pairs the original album with a second disc containing all related EPs, singles, b-sides and live recordings. Disc two kicks off with the 'My Iron Lung' EP, released ahead of the album. All of these tracks are good and represent the transition from Pablo Honey toward the more focused and immediate sound of The Bends. The comparatively spare 'You Never Wash Up After Yourself' stands out with its simple sadness and an understated performance from Yorke. The best song on the second disc is 'Talk Show Host,' a b-side from the single for 'Street Spirit (Fade Out).' A lonely guitar riff, distant lumbering drums, numb keyboards and a ferociously depressed narrative create an eerie heartbreaking atmosphere. It makes sense a remix of this song later found its way onto the soundtrack for Romeo + Juliet.
Other non-album tracks compiled here are worth listening to but fall more clearly into the category of second-tier songs. 'Killer Cars' is morbid fun, mixing energized pop music with runaway paranoid fantasy lyrics. Is a catchy tune with a classic shuffling British melancholy.
The live tracks are also worthwhile; the three song set from the single for 'Fake Plastic Trees' is quite intimate but is less striking than the album versions, and the BBC Sessions have a satisfying grungy edge; but ultimately these performances are not the most compelling material on offer. The second disc contains plenty of good music and makes this edition worth getting if you don't have the material elsewhere, but the album proper remains the star.
The King of Limbs Ticker Tape/XL/TBD Mar 07, 2011 By Laura Studarus (We're running multiple reviews of Radiohead's The King of Limbs. And below is Laura Studarus' take on the album.), as we know it, is dead. The English quintet that blossomed from early '90s rock poster children to new century electro weirdos, has returned after four years in the studio with The King of Limbs, their eight full-length.
But rather than shake up fans by delivering either a truly terrible album or an innovative collection (or even a terribly innovative collection), we’ve been given a standard workhorse album—eight songs of expert, paint-by-numbers Radioheadness. The King of Limbs Ticker Tape/XL/TBD Feb 25, 2011 By Jim Scott The King of Limbs opens with a snappy, off-kilter drumbeat, call-and-response electronics, and then Thom Yorke singing, “Open your mouth wide.” One minute into “Bloom” and the band’s first new album in four years, and the expectations could not be higher. And then the beat continues, the electronics pulse on, and Yorke occasionally dips his toes in with a few lines here and there. “Bloom” never reaches the astounding heights has become known for, but then again, neither does The King of Limbs.
Kid A: Special Collectors Edition Capitol Nov 03, 2009 By Jim Scott Capitol gives Radiohead the reissue treatment on Kid A, Amnesiac, and Hail to the Thief, which should come as no surprise given the band's stature and the current state of the music industry. There's no question that this is a money grab, but whether it's one that benefits the consumer depends on what they've found in the vaults to bolster albums that most people already own and don't have much to gain from remastering or remixing.
When Capitol released a few different shortcuts through Radiohead's career late last year, we were indifferent to its cause, citing a lack of need and poor selection. Most fervent Radiohead fans would have wasted their money buying these packages, and most people interested in the band would be best served by their actual albums. Well, Capitol has now begun to roll out those parent albums- starting with the group's three 1990s releases ( Pablo Honey, The Bends, OK Computer)- again, without the band's participation.
This time, however, the label is doing it right, dressing the releases up with the right accoutrements: B-sides from the era (and since the era overlapped with two-part CD singles, there are plenty), radio sessions, and music videos. For an epochal, era-defining band, Radiohead had an unusual beginning, looking like they'd wind up one-hit wonders, chancers callously attaching themselves to a sound and moment yet with few ideas of their own. That first hit, 'Creep', with its loud/soft dynamic and self-loathing lyric, fit snugly into the post-Nirvana alt-rock landscape- no surprise: Radiohead copped as much from 80s indie rock as their Pac NW brethren did. Yet instead of being hamstrung by platinum success, Radiohead abandoned careerist moves for artistic ambitions, moving quickly to incorporate the record-collector's music of post-rock and Mo Wax, the post-dance, spiritually nurturing end of UK rock, and the pre-millennial tension of IDM and trip-hop. By the end of the 90s, Radiohead hadn't supplanted U2, R.E.M., Oasis, and Metallica as the world's biggest rock band.
But it was largely agreed upon that they were the world's best- and with hindsight, arguably, along with the White Stripes, the last indie-friendly group to conquer the world and punch in the same weight class as early 90s alt-rock giants like Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, Green Day, or Red Hot Chili Peppers. That they used this critical and commercial currency to such dazzling effect on Kid A and Amnesiac is still one of the highlights of this decade; that the press, especially in the UK, chose the more familiar and necrophiliac 'new rock revolution' over the relatively pioneering Radiohead is one of the decade's lows. UK rock, for all its heady artistry and visionaries throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s, had been slumming it a bit when Radiohead first emerged. Size and grandeur, which would become the goals for too many UK guitar bands by the end of the Britpop era, were largely missing from that country's indie scene when Radiohead started recording in 1992. Sure, the Stone Roses had trumpeted their own greatness a few years earlier, but most of the era's indie music was introspective, bands content to gaze at their shoes rather than aim for the back of the venue. Radiohead's early, full-bodied music was, in most circles then, dismissed as empty Americanisms- and not without reason. The expansive Pablo Honey set- the 12-song album accompanied by 22 extras- mostly highlights a group in hock to U.S.
Radiohead The Bends Play Album
Indie heroes Pixes and Dinosaur Jr. Autocad 2014 crack xforce 64-bit. (with the occasional R.E.M. Homage tossed in- see: 'Lurgee').
The loose 'Anyone Can Play Guitar' and delicate 'Thinking About You' thankfully break up the 120-minute mood, but most of the rest of the album is squarely in the post-grunge wheelhouse. That's not always a bad thing: 'Stop Whispering', opener 'You', and a re-recorded version of early single 'Prove Yourself' hold up well- and 'Creep' has oddly gotten better with age. Elsewhere, the dreadful 'Pop Is Dead', and songs like 'How Do You?' , 'I Can't', 'Ripcord', and 'Vegetable' are run of the mill at best. If Pablo Honey didn't betray hints of the band Radiohead would become, neither did its B-sides.
Unlike contemporaries such as Blur, who used their non-album material to explore new ideas or moods, Radiohead's Pablo Honey-era work is primarily lesser versions of the album. The extra material kicks off with their debut release, the Drill EP, which features three rudimentary versions of LP tracks, plus 'Stupid Car', the first of Thom Yorke's odd automobile-themed fixations (still to come: 'Killer Cars', 'Airbag', the 'Karma Police' video.) From there, it's a mishmash of alternate takes and also-rans (highlight: the U.S. Single version of 'Stop Whispering'), with only the shoegazey 'Coke Babies' and an acoustic version of early political commentary 'Banana Co.' (released in much better form on The Bends package) worth exploring more than a few times. I distinctly remember then the first time someone suggested The Bends was a great record.
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Not being one of the million-plus Pablo Honey owners at the time, I was content to hear 'Creep' on the radio over and over and expected I'd soon spend about as much about time with Radiohead's catalog as one would with, say, Hum or Ned's Atomic Dustbin or School of Fish. The My Iron Lung EP had beaten The Bends to U.S. Record shelves by a few months, and the 'High and Dry' / 'Planet Telex' single was out a few weeks prior as well, but few noticed. Anyone who had explored those two earlier singles, however, would have been excited for the LP. A reaction to the success of 'Creep', 'My Iron Lung' found Radiohead still exploring the loud/soft dynamic, but guitarist Jonny Greenwood was also locating his own identity and Yorke, inspired by Jeff Buckley, was using a wider vocal range, including some falsetto. Balancing a slightly artier sense of musical self-destruction with a sinewy guitar line, on 'Lung' Radiohead found new ways to pick apart and re-construct the typical alt-rock template.
Was 's peak as an adventurous guitar band and their creativity wasn't limited to the album proper - it spilled over to that album's B-sides, resulting in their most consistent string of singles, which, in turn, makes the double-disc reissue of the best of all the 2009 deluxe reissues. This collects all the B-sides from the singles for 'My Iron Long,' 'High & Dry'/'Planet Telex,' 'Fake Plastic Trees,' and 'Street Spirit (Fade Out),' adding four BBC sessions to comprise a bonus disc totalling 21 tracks. Compared to the and reissues, this doesn't rely heavily on live tracks or remixes, so there is a pretty hefty amount of valuable non-LP songs here, including 'Talk Show Host,' 'Bishop's Robes,' 'Banana Co.,' and 'Molasses,' which all point the way toward the vibrant twitchy progressive rock of. Even with these tunes hinting toward the future, the 21 tracks on the bonus disc are connected strongly to the muscular, imaginative present of in 1995, building and expanding upon the sound of and, when presented in conjunction with the album, enhancing it, illustrating that this was when the band found its voice.