By Max Luebbers ’16 and Siddharth Jejurikar ’16, Contributors
This March marked the 20th anniversary of Radiohead’s sophomore studio album, The Bends. Released in 1995, it has been largely overshadowed by Radiohead’s later efforts such as critical behemoths OK Computer (1997) and Kid A (2001), and is considered somewhat of a black sheep when it comes to the band’s music. The Bends stands out from other albums in Radiohead’s library by offering more polished and mature version of 1993’s Pablo Honey while utilizing a raw, more alternative, and guitar-driven sound that later works largely left behind. It offered, to me at least, a hypnotizing quality upon first listen, and the raw emotion flooding through each track is hard to not be entranced by.
Radiohead formed in Oxfordshire, England in the Mid-1980’s. Lead by vocalist Thom Yorke and Guitarist/Composer Jonny Greenwood, the band adopted a more American sound in contrast to other lighter pop-ier styles cultivated by British bands like The Smiths and The Sundays. Radiohead instead took influence from the forming grunge, and have often cited the harsh tone and distorted sound of the Pixies as an early influence. This hard and grimy rock blended well with Yorke’s crooning vocals and Greenwood’s aggressive guitar mastery.
Despite a major success early on with the single “Creep”, Radiohead struggled to be heard in the increasingly hard-rock early nineties. They released 3 albums over the course of the decade. Pablo Honey, releasedin 1993was largely a cookie cutter grunge album that received lackluster sales and reviews despite producing on of the bands most popular singles to date. Radiohead returned with The Bends in 1995, which garnered wide critical acclaim as follow up to “Creep”. The album rips and tears with veracity not seen in later work, while offering some genuine soft moments. Finally in 1997 OK Computer was released, revoking most of the hard rock sound for a more focused, softer alternative album with acoustic influences as well as some brief forays into electronic. OK Computer, with Radiohead’s now signature haunting vocals and expansive instrumentation, was received with resounding reviews and is often considered one of the greatest albums ever created.
OK Computer launched Radiohead into the spotlight but what they followed up with at the turn of the century was shocking. The double album Kid A / Amnesiac (2000/2001) was not the guitar-driven alt-rock listeners had become used to. It was full of electronic experimentation, keyboards, and strange distortions. Experimentation and pushing the boundaries of art rock became the bands calling card through the rest of the decade. Hail to The Thief (2003) reined in some of the electronic tones of Kid A but still retained the experimentality that had become a band staple. In Rainbows, released for as a “Name Your Price” album in 2007, expands further on the Radiohead formula, offering a more tangible album than Kid A and letting Thom Yorke loose on the vocals. In Rainbows was followed by the somewhat disappointing The King of Limbs in 2011.
Radiohead’s long and winding history took turns into experimental, electronic and even free-jazz during the 2000’s, yet the release of The Bends was a simpler time, or at least a little simpler. Coming off the dark horse MTV success of disaffected youth favorite “Creep”, Radiohead embarked on a grueling world tour. Over the course of the 2 years between the releases of Pablo, Honey, and The Bends, endless travelling and recording crushed the band’s morale and they nearly broke up. Radiohead was in the pressure cooker. Already placed in the dreaded position of releasing a second album, the band was trying to perfect a sound that had once been damned with faint praise as “Nirvana-Lite” while simultaneously following the commercial success of “Creep”. Many of the songs resent the band’s rise, such as “Planet Telex”, with its opening lines: “You can force it but it will not go” and “My Iron Lung”, with the verse: “This is our new song. / Just like the last one, / a total waste of time.” In an album littered with these attacks, Radiohead vilifies the commercialism that made them a success and the high pressures of owning that success. The album was a flawed masterpiece, yet the band embraced it, creating a sound that seemed torn between old and new, a staple of Radiohead’s awareness of their own legacy and transformation.
I sat down with Siddharth Jejurikar to discuss The Bends’s legacy and Radiohead’s evolving sound.
Siddharth Jejurikar: I think we should start with a little bit about our various introductions to both Radiohead and The Bends
Max Luebbers: Okay. I actually think OK Computer was my first intro into Radiohead. I heard it a long time ago and a lot, and I knew the songs pretty well. Like “Airbag” I could hum but I had no idea what it was called and who it was by, I had no idea it was Radiohead, and I kind of came back into Radiohead after hearing “Creep”.
S: So you kind of started out from OK Computer and then just sort of continued by exploring further?
M: Yeah, going into the earlier stuff from there.
S: Right, I think my first introduction was either OK Computer or In Rainbows. I know those are pretty far apart chronologically, but they’re both part of that newer generation of Radiohead. I listened to them first through my brother and from there branched out into newer Radiohead and I started listening to their 2000s albums. What really appealed to me about those works is their experimentality and their focus on exact production—like the precision of it.
M: I think that, in the later ones, people tend to think Thom Yorke kind of runs the show- I’ve seen this in some reviews. But, no, Jonny Greenwood still has a lot to do with it as a composer, with those albums being a lot more composed, while in older albums they more just run with it and let it flow.
S: Yeah, I agree, with the new albums you see a lot of thought that goes into it beyond just the more clear-cut grunge rock that you see in The Bends and Pablo Honey.
M: Not so much in Pablo Honey, they tightened up more in The Bends, but yeah. I also don’t think the experimentality always works—but there are some songs like “Everything in its Right Place” that do.
S: Yup, great opening track to Kid A, I loved a lot of the sound play they did in the song.
M: Exactly, when they get minimalist with their experimentalist stuff, it gets really good. “I Might be Wrong” too which takes a single guitar track from earlier Radiohead and just played that and added Thom Yorke’s singing over it, and I think that was really successful.
S: I identify with that outlook of yours pretty well, like when we talked earlier you seemed to like some of the tracks like “15 Step” but really didn’t like some of the tracks like “Bodysnatchers” which have more and heavier sounds going on, and seemed a lot more busy in comparison.
M: I didn’t really mind the “busy” thing as much as it being very dissonant—with none of the parts connecting together very well. While in The Bends you have three guitar parts going on but it all sounds connected.
S: Yeah, they were trying to craft something there where everything sort of matches up, a concept they were incredibly successful with in Kid A or Hail to the Thief and OK Computer too even though OK Computer is sort of a bridging album between their two styles—verses In Rainbows, which, while I really love the album with a lot of incredibly well-crafted tracks like “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” or “15 Step”, there are also tracks that I can see being taken as very disconnected in that way.
M: You said that In Rainbows is your favorite of Radiohead right?
S: Either Ok Computer or In Rainbows, if I had to say.
M: Haha, Yeah but OK Computer is sort of a given, everyone loves OK Computer. But in those later albums I get really excited about one song and they screw up the next…
S: I don’t think that they screw up as much as they continue to try new things. They may still working on creating that connectivity or overarching themes in their albums or songs, and sometimes when they do something really original it won’t come out as the listener expects and it’s hard to adapt to those changing styles.
M: I think my favorite example of what I mean is “Pulk/Push Revolving Doors” which is essentially just white noise.
S: They do have some tracks that come off a bit too experimental, but significantly more often they come out with tracks that are overwhelmingly original and well-made.
M: What gets me about Radiohead, a thought that is shared with other fans of early Radiohead, is the misconception that Radiohead does no wrong, and people say that their earlier stuff wasn’t as revolutionary. But now, with the sound they have created, while each song is different, it’s also kind of a minimalist strange rhythm with some weird guitar over it. Their basic idea of where they go hasn’t changed for 15 years since Kid A.
S: I agree in some respects but disagree in others. I think that their experimentalism has improved from The Bends onwards, and I think that, while The Bends is a very well-crafted and super cohesive album, their later albums tend to be allot more progressive. You also said they tend to do this with the same sort of minimalist sound and a complex rhythm and strange instrumental play—I think that if you look at tracks like “Everything in Its Right Place” where they start to do sound play or where Thom Yorke starts to do interesting and creative manipulations of his vocals, the song is really transformed beyond just the same idea of strange rhythm and weird sounds—actually being great and unique with different techniques.
M: I actually think that Thom Yorke’s vocals are one of the key things that changed. He’s taking a much stronger lead in the band since The Bends.
S: As far as performance goes, I’d agree.
M: Yeah, Greenwood still has his composition stuff down but they also feature Thom Yorke more heavily when people started to relate more with his lyrics, whereas in The Bends, Pablo, Honey and, to a lesser degree, OK Computer you get a more acoustically driven piece.
S: You especially get that with “Airbag” which is in the similar vein as Pablo, Honey and The Bends.
M: What I think happened is that they flattened the tracks a lot. In “The Bends”, the song,there are a lot of layers going on, and when you get to “No Surprises” in OK Computer its got the acoustic guitar, the bells, and Thom Yorke playing only, and that’s when they really start to focus Thom Yorke more. And while I get that, what appeals to me more is that The Bends is a much more instrumentally or technically crafted album—actually the word “Technically” is wrong there.
S: Yeah I would have a problem with that wording to; I do agree that the newer album tend to focus on Thom Yorke more I also think that they are actually much more finely tuned with their exacting technical craftsmanship.
M: I think that Jonny Greenwood, in earlier albums, is portrayed more as a guitarist than as a composer, and when you hear it, he’s an amazing guitarist. Some of the solos he puts out on “(Nice Dream)” and “The Bends” or “My Iron Lung” are not fast arpeggio kind of sounds you hear in 80s rock ballads but he is showing his mastery of the guitar and the effects he can get out of it with that shrieky kind of noise. It’s not that he plays a whole bunch of notes quickly; he’s got a crazy sound that he gets out of it that you can’t really produce. Like in a live show, I think it was on Jules Holland, of The Bends he pulls the bottom string like three inches off the fret board which produces this ridiculous computer binary sound, but I think it shows the greater mastery in the band’s whole instrumental proficiency.
S: I would agree there, as far as musical talent goes in instrumentality and each members own mastery of their spheres—The Bends does a fantastic job of showcasing that. You can definitely see Greenwood’s skill, Greenwood’s style, which is really the driving force of that album. While I do think the band as whole comes off, whether or not someone agrees or not, they certainly come off as more creative in late albums, they may not be as well showcasing the sounds that they’re practiced in and great at, they are still putting in a lot of thought and precision into the work to create a piece that comes off in an unique and interesting way.
M: One of the things I think they sought out to do when they started recording The Bends was to show they weren’t just “Creep”. Because that was a huge success for them, they wanted to show that wasn’t it, and while it wasn’t totally Seattle Grunge, they came off as Nirvana-esque and they wanted to prove they weren’t just like Soundgarden or those types of groups.
S: Yeah, and I think a lot of the times with The Bends you can see some, and I think we talked about this before, distinct outliers in the album. Tracks like “Street Spirit” and even some of Thom Yorke’s choruses in the early tracks suggest a very different vibe to the typical grunge feel that permeates the album.
M: It’s still hard rock but it’s them showing their technical skill more, and even saying that they can still do Pablo, Honey in tracks like “Bones” or “Just”—near the middle of the album—where they revert back to that. And then they do “Street Spirit” which is them saying they can do something completely different as well.
S: “Street Spirit” actually ends up being one of my favorite tracks, if not my favorite track, from that album.
M: It’s certainly an outlier, and it’s amazing how it doesn’t even seem to fit in anywhere in the Radiohead discography.
S: Definitely, I don’t think there is any album of Radiohead’s that I would actually place “Street Spirit” but where it is now, because those tracks certainly play a major role in The Bends. Whether they fit thematically or not, those songs are integral to the narrative and artistic experience of The Bends.
M: They’re creating their identity, it’s like saying “Hey we did this with ‘Creep’ and we can do it again with ‘Bones’ but that’s not necessarily what we want to do.” That comes up in songs like “The Bends” and “My Iron Lung” lyrically and, this is a metaphor that’s been pointed out before, The Bends is about the disease of decompression sickness of the same name, the feeling that “look at how high we’ve come, but we’re not sure we fit here, we don’t want to just be the MTV success of ‘Creep’.” And it shows that they’re not revoking that commercial success, fitting in the way that parts of it don’t fit at all. Like back to the solos in “(Nice Dream)” and “[My] Iron Lung” the album goes back to the harsher unrefined sounds of Pablo Honey. It shows that duality of personality you don’t really get anywhere else in Radiohead.
S: I think that the closest you come to that is in OK Computer where they start to meld their various styles, giving that grungy sound in songs like “Airbag” while you also see that experimentality that they’re so great at in tracks like “Paranoid Android” or “Fitter, Happier”.
M: I think that one of Radiohead’s greatest successes is they’re great sense of their own legacy. You see that same sound of “Airbag” coming back in Kid A’s “National Anthem” and Amnesiac’s “I Might be Wrong”—that single guitar pattern that follows the song.
S: I feel that, even with The Bends, which may seem like one of their less creative albums, you can see that great sense of self, like you were talking about the naming of the song and album, they knew what they wanted to do with that album, to prove that they’re a great grunge rock band, they still have the styles of Pablo Honey and they have places to go in the futures which is sort of alluded at in “Street Spirit” with that ability to create haunting and resonating sounds.
M: I think it fits best around OK Computer. Its like, “hey we showed you what we can do in Pablo Honey,” creating that album for the disaffected youth and “we’ve shown that we’re more mature than that too, we can refine that in The Bends”. But every once in a while they’re showing that, in “Bulletproof”, “Street Spirit”, or even earlier songs in the album like “Fake Plastic Trees” and “(Nice Dream)”, we can make and perfect that sound but we’re also moving forward.
S: Yeah, I think a lot of people see OK Computer as the sort of bridge album where they have that rock style and that more progressive style in a similar respect to The Bends’s sense of moving forward.
M: I think that’s why a lot of people see it as the best. It’s composed and everything fits—with no identity crisis, they’ve met and solved that crisis in The Bends, they know what they’re doing. They then completely throw that out the window in Kid A and completely reinvent themselves again. That’s why I think many people see OK Computer as the pinnacle of Radiohead, but you wouldn’t get OK Computer without The Bends.
S: I agree, I think that while OK Computer seems like their peaking point where their styles mix and their identity is firm, you can still see that roots of the in The Bends where they make suggestions to the future, their grunge styles that permeate the album as a whole, and their allusions to Pablo Honey in “Bones” to their older styles. I also think, while you said that they threw their identity out the window in Kid A, and I agree, they do completely reinvent their style, one overarching theme that I attribute to Radiohead that never fades away, all the way from Pablo Honey to King of Limbs is that they have this great sense of self as you said, where they know who they are and what they want to do, as well as a huge ability in creativity and craftsmanship where they create really cohesive, driven, original music.
M: But as a supporter of early Radiohead, I think a really common misconception is that whatever Radiohead does is without fault, and I think that they have done a lot wrong, but that’s kind of who they are. People would be much less forgiving if they didn’t release an album every two years, with their huge catalogue of music. I also think it’s good that older bands like Radiohead reinvent themselves, even if it doesn’t always work. I think it did work really well in Amnesiac and Kid A, they created that sound that they fostered in The Bends and OK Computer but almost repackaging it in a completely different genre.
S: Yeah, in that sense I really agree with you. While you said that the failed a lot of times, its overall been to their goal: they want to try and create something new, they want to redefine the boundaries of genre, they want to question the borders of what music is—and in that regard, Radiohead is one of the most original bands you’ll ever see.
Max’s Recommendations:
Doolittle by Pixies: Cited as an early influence to Radiohead, Pixies perfected a dissonant, grunge sound full of heavy bass and drums in the late-80’s. While it can be a difficult listen, this Boston group is one of the most important and influential rock bands of the era.
Ok Computer by Radiohead: Listen to this. It’s one of the most important albums of all time, and influenced a whole generation of alt-rock. An easily accessible album as far as Radiohead goes, it uses a softer sound than previous albums and more conventional style than later albums. Along with The Bends and Pablo Honey, this is a good place to start when getting into Radiohead.
Sidd’s Recommendations:
OK Computer by Radiohead: Heavily referenced in this discussion, OK Computer is, in my opinion, one of the real great albums of the past two decades. OK Computer is a fantastic introduction to Radiohead and a great continuation of the themes of The Bends.
Kid A by Radiohead: Another Radiohead album heavily referenced in this discussion, a masterpiece of creativity and experimental sounds – Kid A is definitely worth a listen for those with bold tastes.
Agaetis Byrjun by Sigur Rós: There are very few bands comparable to Radiohead, and Sigur Rós is one of them. They use haunting sounds in this album that are reminiscent of Thom Yorke’s vocals in songs like “Street Spirit” or “Sail to the Moon” and refine themselves on a technical level similar to Radiohead.
Cosmogramma by Flying Lotus: Completely different to the other albums on this list yet still well-fitting is Cosmogramma by trip-hop artist Flying Lotus. Thom Yorke’s feature on the album’s “…and the World Laughs with You” and Fly-Lo’s unique computerized sounds and electronic production provide a great accompaniment to Kid A, In Rainbows, or any other Radiohead work.
