Radiohead - OK Computer (Capitol)

CD Review by Reef Valmont

It’s rare to hear a CD where every single track holds your attention, colors your heart, surges your soul or causes some other extreme reaction. It’s practically unheard of to listen to an album wherein every single second of music is immediately part of an essential soundtrack to your life.

Radiohead’s last album, The Bends, was a great record. It surpassed all expectations after the patchy, unassuming "Pablo Honey" debut which, in all honesty, only enjoyed the success it did due to the inclusion of perfect zeitgeist smacking single "Creep" which we all thought would be the millstone to immediately break a young Radiohead’s neck. The fact that Radiohead have even got this far is testament to their abilities, and with OK Computer they have transcended being a mere British rock band (that term should be saved for the Oasis’s and Bush’s of this world) and have become some kind of musical super-beings. OK Computer is setting incredible standards, breaking previously unbreakable molds and pissing all over the rest of the competition from a great height with each passing play. Can mere mortals have really made this album?

Well, obviously yes. Without the fragile humanity and delicate heart inherent in the songs this wouldn’t be the benchmark release it most definitely is. Vocalist Thom Yorke is one of the most underrated singers to ever hit and hold a high note. When people say they could happily listen to Burgess or Gallagher or Ashcroft sing the phonebook, they need to readjust their rating system a little. Yorke can not only soar like an angel (listen to "Lucky") and fill your heart like a landfill, he can also crack his vox and deliver a harsh rock performance ("Electioneering") that leaves the industry’s so-called hard-men weeping and bleeding in his slipstream.

It’s hard to single out individual tracks for special mention when this is such a fully-immersed swallow-whole experience, and it’s the details, tiny moments of magic or huge slabs of epiphany amongst the glorious noise that leave you swooning and shaking your head in wonder. Some examples - exactly halfway through the album when everything stutters to a halt and the lyrics to the track "Fitter Happier" are recited by Yorke’s home computer in that strange PC-voice, a weird, maudlin few minutes of mechanical come-down and forced reflection before the album regenerates itself and shoots once more into the sky. Staggeringly effective. Or the way "Airbag" underpins the sweetest, saddest singing from Yorke with simple techno percussion and turntable dissonance. Then along comes the even more sorrowful "Paranoid Android" and as the plucked, acoustic based music drops down with all swashes buckling Yorke sighs "When I am King you will be first against the wall" before the guitars explode in his face. Fucking huge.

To revert to tired cliche in the face of stellar greatness, if you only buy one album this year make it OK Computer. I haven’t even mentioned the Kundera-esque tragi-drama of "Exit Music" or how closing track "The Tourist" is so much the sound of finality that when it ends with a small "ding"* you’re left alone spinning in a suddenly very cold and empty place.

The next time you’re in a record store, think of Radiohead and remember that you are just minutes away from owning revelation. I can push you no further.