The Elegance of Transcendence: Reviewing Radiohead’s OK Computer

By Bradley Hartsell

for Advanced Composition, ETSU, Spring 2011

Albums come around in pop music every so often to help push it in new directions. For rock in the 1990s, there was Nirvana’s 1991 Nevermind, who helped create grunge. There was My Bloody Valentine’s 1991 gem, Loveless, which established the ethereal, fuzz-driven genre of shoegaze. Pavement submitted another staple of post-punk (a more complex subdivision of punk music) with Slanted and Enchanted. Music critics might argue, however, Radiohead’s OK Computer raised music’s consciousness. The 1997 album has been cemented in rock history as the defining album of the 90s and one of the best of all time. Yet time passes and sometimes we forget the minutia of what makes an album so great, only remembering it as an impressing blur of sound. It’s important to reanalyze the things that are so connective to the present world in order to keep perspective, so let’s remember what it is exactly we love about Radiohead and OK Computer.

Riding of the ubiquitous wave of grunge of the early 90s, Radiohead sounded like they wanted to rub elbows with Nirvana and Pearl Jam with their 1993 release Pablo Honey. Steeped in leaden guitar riffs, Pablo Honey attempted to be different by featuring the off-center but beautiful voice of Thom Yorke, as opposed to the garbled, raspy voice attributed to grunge. Despite the embellishment, Pablo was widely panned by critics and more or less cast off, other than lead single (and still the biggest hit of their career) “Creep.”

1995’s The Bends found Radiohead getting comfortable in their own skin. It is still anchored by charged-up guitars, yet done with more tact than a lame grunge rip-off. Radiohead started to expand their sound, including frequent elements of atmosphere. This time, critics fell over themselves to praise the ambition and execution of Radiohead.

After The Bends, the band looked ready to completely shed the grunge aesthetic. OK Computer allowed Radiohead to transcend genres, and they could all finally get the bad taste of Honey out of their mouths.

“Airbag” opens the album with guitars that sound like chainsaws cutting into your ears. The abrasion gives way to more reserved playing of the instruments, but they’re recorded in such a way that their frequencies fly out in all directions, creating an illusion of expansion. Yorke uses his voice as another instrument of expansion in the coda, rather than the standard verse/chorus singing earlier in the song. “Airbag” unifies in the final minute, making the song ascend a level Radiohead hadn’t reached previously.

“Paranoid Android” inverses itself from the album opener by morphing its serene beginning into a buzz-saw midsection. The band pierces with their guitars, aiming for a large melodic squall. All of the sudden, everything drops out and the song turns into an ominous choir. Supplied with only an acoustic guitar and wordless voices, Yorke begins singing his elongated melody, culminating with the eerie “God loves his children” lyric. The song makes a final turn back into the angular guitars, before coming to an end.

Radiohead set aside their power chords for a moment with the reflective, ethereal “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” which thrives with odd space-station sounds. Despite the strange sounds, “Alien” is standardized in rock structure. Where “Paranoid Android” was morphing narrative every couple of minutes, “Alien” is comfortable with verse-chorus-bridge-outro.

My personal favorite, “Exit Music (For a Film)” starts with Yorke singing bleakly over a strumming acoustic guitar. Slowly, the song builds on the acoustic guitar, adding in indistinguishable sounds before the full band kicks in. A fuzzy bass line leads the band, driving the melody along with Yorke. At the song’s apex, the band is caterwauling towards a beautiful climax, before retreating back to softness and closing out hauntingly.

“Let Down” again gets back to standard rock structure with a clear verse-chorus-bridge form. The rhythm of the song is nothing more than appropriate acoustic guitar strumming, but the song is so swollen with digitized sounds, it’s barely noticeable. The affected electric guitars sound as though they’re orchestral; they swell and hover, but with a sci-fi bend that an orchestra couldn’t pull off.

If “Creep” is regretfully Radiohead’s most recognizable song, the cheap radio hit they have rejected for much of their subsequent career, “Karma Police” would be next in line in popularity. “Karma Police” is a ballad, largely made up of an acoustic guitar chord progression and piano. This is Radiohead, though, and they have to do more than just strum their way through a song. It builds with more orchestral inflation, as the band rides the song’s apex, which is contained in the extended coda, featuring the lyrics “For a minute, yeah / I lost myself, I lost myself.”

No doubt Radiohead has been mega-ambitious within the first six songs. They’ve taken the ethos of rock, and remade the ethos with a space-like grandeur, all done with manipulations of voices and electric guitars and their effects pedals. But it’s hard to match the ambition of “Fitter Happier,” which challenges listeners in a big way. An android voice recites a monologue, satirizing modern technological society in lines like, “will frequently check credit at moral bank hole in the wall.” The phrases ring so astoundingly human, but of course, the phrases are blocked by the robotic voice, which is far from human. The monologue is delivered over a haunting piano and cello lines. It doesn’t seem like a true song, yet here it is, in the middle of a wildly ambitious album. Casual music fans will skip “Fitter Happier,” or pretend like it isn’t there, but Radiohead want it to speak volumes about OK Computer. For the diehards, it makes for a creepy-but-strong addition to the narrative of the album.

Radiohead isn’t perfect, however, and “Electioneering” will affirm as much. The riffing guitars had been absent since “Paranoid Android,” but here they make their return along with a cowbell. The song gets away from, or at least buries, the atmosphere that becomes the hallmark of OK Computer. It’s not a very good song, due to a hokey riff and some subpar vocal work by Yorke, but it also disturbs the album’s flow with the jump back into guitar rock. Consider it a misstep, but they quickly atone for it.

“Climbing Up the Walls” buzzes and rings out due to the bass and the hollow percussion, played by Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway, respectively. Yorke sings exceptionally over the duo, before Johnny Greenwood (Colin’s brother) comes in with his unique guitar solo, which is drenched in the effects pedal. Ed O’Brien piles on the atmosphere with his own guitar, creating denseness to an otherwise sparse song.

The simplest song of the album, by far, is “No Surprises.” The song rides a lullaby guitar riff, adding in minimal drumming and bass. Yorke croons like it’s a standard ballad, even if it doesn’t sound like one.

“Lucky” is structured similarly to “Exit Music,” in that it begins with a bare intro (Yorke and a simple electric guitar), and builds into something much grander. The climax is Yorke exclaiming “It’s gonna be a glorious day! / I feel my luck could change.” It’s not a complex song, but it’s so well executed in terms of the atmosphere and the mood it creates. The coda is revived, in an effective way of extending the song and closing it out with another section of further character.

OK Computer finally bids us adieu with “The Tourist,” which is a reflective ballad, with a slow, spindly guitar riff. Yorke steals the show with his caterwauling voice ascending to the stratosphere of the song. Johnny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien cultivate the illusion of passionate sweetness with their additions of reserved atmosphere. And with one hit of a bell, akin to a typewriter, the album concludes.

****

I heard these stunning songs when I was sixteen and my hip neighbor, whom I sort of looked up to, burned me a bunch of CDs. OK Computer was one of the discs, and I remember liking it immediately. I had several enjoyable listens to the album under my belt when the magnitude of what I heard really sank in. I was at a church for a comedy/magic/sermon mash-up, with my headphones in (doing my best angst-laden teen impression). The setting seemed merely inconsequential to the music, but that particular listen of OK Computer was the one that opened my eyes to its greatness. All great music does it. A memory of the listening to an album will become etched into your head and by default, all recollections of said album will occur inside that memorable setting. Even though the church’s comedy routine was ultimately irrelevant to Thom, Colin, Ed, Johnny, and Phil, the experience remains a strong reflection on my relationship with OK Computer.

I could have been listening to the radio like everyone else, I guess, but I was a product of good fortune. There’s no formula for getting kids to expand their horizons past the local rock station, 95.9 FM in this part of the world. Somebody always needs to point somebody else in a new direction, and you never know when the opportunity will come around. This is an album I keep passing down, like it was passed down to me, because it hit me at the right time; I was 16 and in need a fresh perspective and some better hobbies. I hope the album can hit others the same, and that’s why it’s important to talk about it and explain the inner-workings of greatness instead of taking it for granted.

These songs (minus “Electioneering”) are all wonderful gems on their own. But OK Computer also succeeds because of the narrative and cohesion they create. The songs seem to fit together when the album is played in its entirety. The grand guitar-orchestra hybrid make the album unique, ambitious, and stunning. The richness of sound is omnipotent throughout, and becomes undeniably alluring. So while we hear the resounding name, OK Computer, we’d be fools to forget the unparalleled vocals of Thom Yorke, or the resonating atmosphere created by Johnny Greenwood’s guitar and arrangements. We’d be fools for forgetting the overwhelming greatness contained inside OK Computer.