Out, demons, out!
Twenty years ago, Radiohead’s paradigm-shifting third album invoked a spell that could only be cast once, says Danny Eccleston.
“IN THE END IT’S WHAT THESE SONGS SAY, MORE THAN HOW THEY SOUND, THAT MADE THEM DARING AND PRESERVES THEIR POWER.”
Radiohead OK Computer [OKNOTOK 1997-2017]
AXL. CD/DL/LP
snapshot of 1997. A pre-release of the new album by Oxonian five-piece Radiohead lands in the office of the UK’s best-selling rock magazine. After the triumph of ’95’s The Bends, another 45 minutes of superior, arena-ready guitar rock is eagerly anticipated. The cassette is feverishly inserted into the deck and… jaws hit the floor. What. The. Fuck? Guitars, if that is what they are, whirr and crackle. Tempos lurch. As side one unfolds it betrays a freedom in its form and a high seriousness that rock has abjured for a decade. And that’s before you get to the two minutes of computer-voice monologue slap bang in the middle – “Like a cat/Tied to a stick/That’s driven into/Frozen winter shit” – like Stephen Hawking hacked by Samuel Beckett, speaking the death of the soul. It’s an album that at times sounds like it wants to smash your face to pieces, sometimes your heart. It’s beautiful, horrible, bleak, spiteful, overwhelmed, overwhelming – a cry of panic, despair, anxiety in the face of accelerating modernity. There was a presumption, perhaps, among critics, that the world wasn’t, couldn’t be ready for this, but it must have been ready, because in spite of appearing designed to baffle, bemuse and bum out, OK Computer went to Number 1 in the UK charts and swiftly became just another step in Radiohead’s inexorable rise to global eminence, a process that even Radiohead, even when they’ve really, really tried, have struggled to derail. Twenty years on, the extent to which OK Computer was a rupture in popular music is preserved, even accentuated in this exquisitely remastered and judiciously augmented reissue. It sounds no more a document of Late Britpop than it did at the time, and its capacity to unsettle endures. Beyond the strength and resonances of its songs – which still describe the world we’re in, more or less – and its thematic coherence, there is the complexity of its sonic architecture. On OK Computer’s release, the ‘p’ words (prog, and Pink Floyd) were bandied – indeed, guitarist Jonny Greenwood was going through a phase of kite-flying with Meddle on his Walkman. But some of the earliest words of praise came from the dance music community, bowled over by Radiohead’s manipulation of texture, a key ingredient in the expanding feel-world of post-house electronica. When asked for then-current inspirations, Radiohead invoked records that pulled rock and pop apart. Thom Yorke referred to A Day In The Life and Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew. “You’re never quite sure where you are in it,” said Yorke, noting how it at first made him “feel sick”. In terms of nailing the way in which OK Computer is a greater, more mature work than The Bends, this gets pretty close. The former’s songs are not much sounder than the latter’s, but Radiohead embraced ambiguity more fully, and were not trying so hard to fit into pre-existing rock shapes. Electioneering may have something of the swing of The Smiths in the bass and drums, but compare it with The Bends’ Bones, which is actually a boogie. Yorke, meanwhile, no longer straining, or so actorly, finds a more believable vocal for every song. There are musical thrills and revelations at every stage. The way Colin Greenwood’s bass enters Airbag at 32 seconds – gruff but quizzical, like a dancing bear. The key change into “Uptight…/ Uptight…” in Subterranean Homesick Alien. Jonny Greenwood’s David Gilmour moment on Lucky; Ed O’Brien’s insectoid mithering on the intro to same. All of the wracked, broken chanson of Exit Music (For A Film) – a My Way for the looming new millennium. Phil Selway’s newly characteristic pitter-patter throughout, but especially on The Tourist, the best song not on Neil Young’s On The Beach. Even the relatively minor pieces – the hypnotic Let Down and buzzy, droney Climbing Up The Walls (indicating exactly where Blur would go on 13) – add unique moods. But in the end it’s what these songs say, more than how they sound, that made them daring and preserves their power. The 6:23 triptych of Paranoid Android might have made an astounding instrumental – Jonny Greenwood’s squalling mentalism from 5:36 is perhaps the most hairraising guitar statement of the ’90s – but the lyric is the killer. “Kicking, squealing, Gucci little piggy” does not reflect well on the narrator – but Yorke doesn’t care; he’s remembering a moment when horror and hatred for another individual overcame him, and that’s what makes it uninhibited, great art. No Surprises is the album’s other, er, anthem, but with polarities reversed: a minimal, harplike guitar and glockenspiel introduce a lullaby to toxic numbness – a vain plea to “bring down the government” that settles for “a handshake of carbon monoxide”. For all Yorke’s “fits” and “bellyaches”, OK Computer rarely bids for the moral high ground. Just like the “we” in Karma Police, Radiohead are “still on the payroll”. Most of us are. Considering the furore it caused on release in 1997, and its solid ongoing reputation as a landmark album, it is ironic that OK Computer did not in fact light a path for rock. Radiohead themselves would step back from its bustling intensity, and following clues in Airbag and Karma Police B-side Meeting In The Aisle (a bonus track here), found that electronica called them forward. Meanwhile, Radiohead’s tactical withdrawal from guitar rock left negative space for a spate of epic-indie wannabes, clutching The Bends and Jeff Buckley’s Grace, with less complex, more ingratiating agendas: Muse, Coldplay, Elbow. They’re still with us, of course. Further confirming the sense of OK Computer as a spell that could have been cast only once are the previously unreleased tracks included in all versions of the new package. All three are excellent in their way: I Promise, a gorgeous minimal march with lush Scott Walker strings; Man Of War, with its Mick Ronson-y guitar, a welcome appearance by a live favourite; Lift, a somewhat route one but ultimately irresistible slowburner with Moog set to stun. They’re lovely, and all of a piece, but lack the desperate need-to-exist of anything in the original. Removing the CD from the original OK Computer’s jewel case revealed a message by artwork designers Thom Yorke and partner-in-misanthropy Stanley Donwood: “Against Demons”. Yorke called it a charm against the evil forces of the world, real and imagined. But it had already failed. The demons were all here. They’re still here.