Radiohead: OK Computer

You could think of it as a failure for every single music critic in the media that it took me until 2011 to finally sit down with this album. Part of it was my own willful resistance, but it's a review's job to bridge potential listeners to music they might enjoy. And for whatever reason, it never occurred to me until recently, well after I started a music blog, that I might enjoy OK Computer.

I've read about it. It's impossible not to. You sit down with an article about "X Best Albums of X Decades" and you can expect only a little bit of variation as to what's on top, and OK Computer has that impenetrable aura of greatness about it, a dense cloud of high praise. But I could never get a sense of what the album might sound like or why I might enjoy it. You can say that it's great and groundbreaking and important, but I don't know... what do those words sound like? It's intimidating. So you stay away, because not knowing is better than being disappointed. TVTropes calls it Hype Aversion. Overpraising an album is a good way to get people to turn against it. In the past I've been as susceptible to it as anyone, but over the last year I've worked, and worked hard, to keep it straight, exactly how to figure out what I think of an album, and to hopefully never push to hard so as to turn others off something I think they'll like.

Years ago, I heard "Paranoid Android." I probably wasn't ready for it, and my thought was likely "I don't think I could stand a whole album of this." It was too deliberately weird, and I wasn't into it at the time because I didn't see it as being as good as other deliberately weird songs. If I was trying to get someone to buy OK Computer, I don't think I'd play them "Paranoid Android" first. I'd probably play them "Airbag," the opening track. It blurs into focus, the themes and sonic territory of the album, with guitars both distorted and crystal clear, ragged strings and that late-90's beat. Thom Yorke's vocals soar with pure amazement at being alive: amazement at the simple wonder of technology that has saved his life, and at the world in which he finds himself... it's a wonderfully uncertain lyric, with a nice, tense instrumental backing that sets the atmosphere quite beautifully. The album shows a commitment to its whole aesthetic, rock without trying too hard to rock. At times transcendent, at times low. A sort of roundabout attempt to capture the extremes of humanity on record. There's such tension here.

With "Paranoid Android," the album might be showing its hand too early. It's probably the most ambitious composition, as I said, willfully weird, and not most people's idea of pleasure listening. That may be the point, but much of what follows actually is my idea of pleasure listening. I love the spacey yearning of "Subterranean Homesick Alien," that desire for something bigger than yourself, and for escape from day-to-day mundanity. It drifts wonderfully into its "Uptight, uptight" refrain, a word and delivery that seems to say so much about what the album is calling your attention to. Much of the album is spacey and soft-focus, like "Exit Music (For a Film)" a gradually-sharpening postmodernish Romeo & Juliet story (the Baz Luhrmann version being the film in question.) "Let Down" may be one of the most pleasurable songs on the album, using a delightfully somber twinkling instrumentation to lament tiny disappointments that become a big huge thing. That delicate guitar picking really sells it.

Two of my favourite tracks are separated by the anomalous "Fitter Happier." If OK Computer is a new generation's Dark Side of the Moon, then "Fitter Happier" is the disturbing inverse of "Great Gig In The Sky." It chills me: spoken-word piece read by one of those awful computer voices you'd get in the late 90's, with no intonation, deep in the Uncanny Valley (none of the words are unrecognizeable.) It seems at once to be polite encouragement, dictatorial demands, and an expression of disappointment, disapproval. And it's a fucking robot voice.

On one side of it is the probably showpiece of the album, "Karma Police." If "Paranoid Android" is an exhibition of how far they can go, "Karma Police" is a great example of what they can do with it, with a song that sounds like a song. Like most of the time, Yorke's voice seems thin, like it could be knocked over in a stiff breeze, but that's the strength, as the music builds around it and drops away as he declares, "This is what you get." So much of the album can be left to interpretation, but the band knows how to send a signal, like with the distant, melty-sounding "Climbing Up The Walls," which sounds like it was recorded from the next room.

After "Fitter Happier," we get the downright disruptive "Electioneering," one of the few songs on the album that can be said to cut loose. I love that it's this breakneck moment on this otherwise very nervy, restrained album, that it has this pure squealing rock pissed-offness to it and yet doesn't sound out of place. I learn from reading fan opinions that it's not thought of as being one of the better tracks, which is a good explanation why I don't generally concern myself with the opinions of others these days.

"No Surprises" is in its way, as chilling as "Fitter Happier," so serene but so cold, taking us back to the monotony of everyday life, about the horrors of stability. I was thinking today about songs like Springsteen's "Born in the USA" and Mellancamp's "Our Country," and how they're often misinterpreted by marketers. I don't think there's any doing that with this album. Sure, the lyrics "No alarms and no surprises" read very pleasant on the page, but in delivery are just unsettling and dark. Well on second thought, the words don't seem that pleasant written out. But they convey their meaning without saying them, but also without hiding that they're saying them.

"Lucky" could be the end of the album for me. It's suitably climactic, and "The Tourist" is a nice coda. Both are very much great exercises in the album's style. "Lucky," with its utter helplessness, "The Tourist," like the last one left in a lonely room. I'd say that's probably what I like about the album -- and why, after repeated listens, I find "Paranoid Android" is now a rather vital part of the experience. I don't like the album because of what it says to me, but I love it for the way it goes about saying it. You need a really clear view of your music, and of the world around you, to come up with a set of songs like this. It's a real package. I even love the title: A "Computer" seeming like a foreign, monolithic thing that sits in your office and commands you, without ever really understanding what you are, nor you it; and "OK" both being a statement of quality ("good enough") and consent ("go ahead") which seems to relate very directly to the content and themes of the album, its ambivalent attitude. It's a whole thing, and I like it that way. But you can't just love an album because it seems to talk about the world around you, it has to sound good. The album deserves its reputation, but it doesn't need to hide behind it.

What I'm getting at, in an "Oh God Why Is He Still Talking" way, is that there's nothing special or sacred about this album. It's not something you need to keep on your shelf and only listen to on special occasions like Easter and Christmas. Good music should be part of your life always, and the many enjoyable facets of OK Computer are ones shared with other great albums. It's not wrong at all simply to enjoy these songs because they're good songs that happen to tap into my head, about some insecurities I have about the time and place I live, and mold it into musical form. Whatever they're up to on this seems to work. It's an engaging listen, and certainly not an impenetrable one. I didn't need to be afraid to listen to this album. It doesn't sound like the dense work of art the reviews make it out to be. But it's not surprising that this album, with all its character and strangeness, might also appeal to the types of people who can talk about great art (and make "greatest albums" lists) with a straight face, and of course become major music critics. Thankfully, it works for much of the rest of us too.

Then the album ends with a ding, as if awakening you from the trance, and back to the world for better or worse.

Buy this album now! iTunes // Amazon.com // Amazon.ca