A very good Radiohead track, this one. Roaming around the internet I’ve come to find that the opinion on The Bends is that it’s great, but Radiohead didn’t become the almighty greatness they are until the next album they did. Something along those lines anyway. When it comes to me, there are plenty of times when I probably prefer to listen to The Bends over their experimental, thinking-man’s work. The record’s cathartic in a variety of ways. You get the slow burners, you get the full-on rock bangers, and then there are the pretty ones that float along and wow you with their beauty. ‘(Nice Dream)’ covers that last category quite aptly.

I’m a sucker for a song in 6/8 time. I believe I wrote about another track in that timing only a few days ago. And here’s another. Actually, like ‘New Test Leper’, ‘(Nice Dream)’ is very much acoustic-led. The guitars that start ‘Dream’ off and pretty much stay in the mix throughout were played by all five bandmembers in a garden somewhere. You can hear an electric guitar chugging away in the verses way in the back, but the spotlight really falls on those acoustics and Thom Yorke’s soft vocal that’s very upfront. Gotta give a shout out to those beautiful strings during the choruses too. Really pull on your heartstrings, they do. The time when things really get a bit edgy is in the bridge where Jonny Greenwood pulls out one of his solos where he sounds like he’s strangling the guitar and pushing it to its limits. When that intense bridge ends, it softly lands into the outro, more reminiscent of the quieter verses, that fades out with these strange, surreal “whale songs” as neatly described by bassist Colin Greenwood.

Radiohead never regularly play much of their pre-OK Computer material live. There are those that that statement doesn’t count for like ‘Fake Plastic Trees’, ‘My Iron Lung’, even ‘Creep’ at this point. So when they pull a deeper cut from out of the hat, it’s usually met with a reception of shock and excitement. During the second half of their tour for In Rainbows, they played ‘(Nice Dream)’ for the first time in five years. Sometimes I get the feeling Thom Yorke doesn’t like playing those deep-cut Bends-era songs that much. He started to write more in the third-person for OK Computer and beyond because he was tired of writing about himself all the time. But when he smiles right at the end of the performance, I think what am I talking about. He probably does. It’s a great live take.