That guitar on Airbag all snarly and meaty to start tge album and then to drop that into a dj shadow homage…
…android is fun… social awkwardness and contempt but funny and moving too.
… subterranean is a song for all times. a funny reminder that we are not the centre of the universe
… exit music… a song to keep us warm… theres such a chill. the start of their run of great songs with fuzz bass… perfect
… let down. unbeatable… the image of salarymen or such clinging onto bottles… the digutal rain…
… karma police reminds one of the humility of turning off the ‘judgement’ button in our brain that we all overuse. to some beatlesy pop tune … radiohead festival singalong… ha
… fitter happier spoke to me when i did not see how to leave educational inatitution shelter and go into the real world.
… electioneering is a bit weak and earnest but they dont headbang enough so its ok
… i love the scream at the end of climbing…liaten tto on a subway train surrounded by commuters…bit of harnessing of a doom rock vibe there.
…the video for surprises discussed on sky in mpie is worth the video alone. a sigh in song form for days which feel like one long big sigh. wish more bands would try to rip off sparklehorse. prretty prretty ballad with lyrics to make your m.o.r. listener stop in their tracks and scratch their head
… i think ‘help’ and lucky is where they realised how to go to the next level from bends era. so full of hope. guitar work replicates that hope… sounds like sunlight bursts or epihanies in a battered and broken town.
… a less standout finale but it fits and for me the key to the album tge tourist is the one that joins up the others under the thene 'we need to slow down, quit trying to progress as fast as we can. The artwork goes with that bigtime and i think the title ties into that too…
No kidding it’s an opinion, if everyone had to put that at the beginning of everything we said it’d be a massive waste of time.
My age has nothing to do with it, it’s not even the best Radiohead album, or the best album of 1997, chillax m8.
Not causing trouble, just intrigued. I think the reason I like it so much might be in relation to where I was at the time. Age-wise, etc. If I was older when it came out and had heard more stuff (maybe more of their obvious influences) it wouldn’t have resonated and stuck with me so much. Dunno.
It was a good year. I bought Dig Your Own Hole and In It For The Money on the same day. Great day. Spent the afternoon listening to them both very loudly in my dad’s office.
The key difference is just that it reached the gatekeepers of taste in music press of the time, I think? I mean obviously Urban Hymns did that to a large degree but I think it was too ‘straight’ to also pull in those who liked things a bit more ‘experimental’ (<— not the right word. Maybe ‘pretentious indie twats’ is better?). By gatekeepers I mean all the old white guys brought up on 70s guitar who thought music had been in decline ever since and disparaged the younger generation.
I think OKC resonated as ‘the best’ just because its cross-section of music fans was so large, which was all you needed in the 90s.
listened to it this morning. didn’t enjoy it as much as i thought i would. has dated quite badly, and some of it just seems so… basic compared to to what they went on to do.
I’m a bit conflicted. I love it when I play it (which is very rarely these days) and it’s definitely a classic but the all the hyperbole gets a bit much. Greatest of 1997? I dunno, I don’t recall any Beatles album or other classic being described as the greatest of that year. We just accept these as ‘classics’.
Obviously the flip side is that in 1997 I felt massively vindicated, not just because an album I’d been anticipating had been accepted so strongly by so much media but also because it reflected on that whole genre of ‘Indie’ as making a lot of old people go, “Oh yeah, maybe there’s a reason kids like this”.
i’m a big fan but definitely get that vibe off a lot of it. it’s never been my favourite Radiohead album, i went from preferring the energy of The Bends on to preferring the oddness of Kid A. my favourite tracks on it being Airbag and Climbing up the Walls is probably partly down to the fact they’re the only tracks i can really imagine fitting on to one of the later albums (though i guess a lot of the slower songs would probably fit on In Rainbows or AMSP)
This will seem totally unrelated but have you read fear of music by Garry Mulholland? Think you’d find a lot to like there. Good for a lengthy read or a flick through.
What yr saying about a mix of old and new ties into what he says about the bends is all, I’ll find it when I get 5 minutes.
