Radiohead's musical gestures are grand, even spacious, but they are neither airy nor light. Indeed, the space of this music is dense. Beneath the stupendous angst of their songs Radiohead creates a minute, complex texture, a flexible network of distortions and...
[more]Radiohead's musical gestures are grand, even spacious, but they are neither airy nor light. Indeed, the space of this music is dense. Beneath the stupendous angst of their songs Radiohead creates a minute, complex texture, a flexible network of distortions and modulations. The band's angst turns in on itself even as it expands to cosmic proportions. The broad, grandiose sweep of the organ and the tortured tremor of Thom Yorke's voice would collapse into nothingness if not for the meticulous guitar work and electronic noise-play teeming and swarming in the background.
Sometimes this background even surges to the fore like the sudden swirling rush of a flushed toilet. Or a deliciously subtle rhythm of oddly spaced chords might emerge suddenly from the underlying mire, a moment of delicate differentiation. Radiohead's music spires up from and whorls back into a sucking vortex.
But this sound didn't emerge immediately or spontaneously. Radiohead made their debut in 1993 with "Pablo Honey," an album that offered only a hint of what their future held. Indeed, "Pablo Honey" probably would have sunk into oblivion had it not been for the misanthropic anthem "Creep," which received heavy airplay in both England and the U.S. With its crunchy guitars, recorded feedback, and alienated lyrics, 'Creep' suggested (erroneously) that Radiohead was a one-hit wonder that had fallen off the alternative-rock bandwagon.
However, later albums demonstrate a matured sound that is far from the one-hit standard. "The Bends" (1995) proves that Pink Floyd, R.E.M., and the Pixies can indeed cohabitate in the space of a single band. Radiohead exploits the potential of their three-guitar line-up, producing clever arrangements that provide a subtle backdrop for Thom Yorke's disgruntled lyrics. At a time when grunge was on the wane and music fans needed something subtler than three-chord Nirvana imitations, this was the perfect transitional album. Sure the songs are still angst-filled, but the delivery is wide-ranged and fresh. 'Fake Plastic Trees,' which features nothing much more than an acoustic guitar and Yorke's sweet falsetto, is simple and lonely enough to provoke tears. But songs like 'Just' and 'Bones' are delicious, upbeat rock songs whose soaring guitar crescendos just beg to be played live.
But it wasn't until "O.K. Computer" (1997) that Radiohead realized what they'd been moving toward all along. Guitars blend together with a swirl of synthesizer sounds and wonderfully untraditional song structures. The song 'Paranoid Android' is a magnificent journey all by itself -- mellow guitar meanderings move abruptly into screams of aggression and wind back down into exhausted, lyrical sighs. The album is sweeping and enormously sad, but here and there are moments of smiles and smirks that temper the torment. It's a delicate assemblage of sound, a difficult synthesis that transcends typical distinctions. If this was the kind of complex orchestration they'd been striving for all along, it's no wonder it took them a while to get there.
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