Well, would you look at that. It’s Radiohead, again. But for anyone out there who still couldn’t get their heads around why the band decided to make that drastic change in sound 23 years ago, today’s track should take you back to what I suppose you would label as the better times. ‘Palo Alto’ was initially released as a B-side on the ‘No Surprises’ single in the first few weeks of 1998. Sandwiched between the title track and fellow B-side ‘How I Made My Millions’, ‘Palo Alto’ works as the energetic pick-me-up to lighten the mood somewhat between the two sobering numbers. Though if you weren’t around at that time or simply too young to understand what was even going on, you’ll recognise it as being one of the numbers on the second disc of the OK Computer OKNOTOK reissue from 2017.

I came across it many years back through watching the Meeting People Is Easy documentary on YouTube. If you want to see a group of people feeling tired, irritable and jaded while promoting an album, that video is the one for you. There’s a section in there that showing Thom Yorke working on and generally vibing to ‘Palo Alto’ on a tour bus, but the full track plays over a montage of sped-up/reversed/slowed down footage of people on escalators and the band walking through Japan. It looks much better than how I’ve described, so I’d recommend you watch it. I’ll go ahead and embed that below, it’s the closest to an official music video you can get for it.

So as I alluded to earlier, this is the fat rocking number on the ‘No Surprises’ single to make the alleviate the sombre mood of the two other tracks. All’s quiet during the verses where Thom Yorke disconnectedly sings about living in the ‘city of the future’ where ‘everybody’s happy/made for life’, but then you get smacked in the face by a slamming wall of blasting guitars for the choruses. It’s a big freak out/cathartic moment for any of those people who have to get those twitchy moments out of their system. The track continues the ‘technology isn’t all it’s cracked up to be’ and personal detachment themes that OK Computer is known for and was actually lined up to be the album’s title track for a while until it underwent the name change. Unlike the tracks that made it on the final record, ‘Palo…’ is a little more on-the-nose with the subject, which is probably the only reason I could think of why it didn’t make it on there. But anyhow, it carries on the large legacy of great B-sides that Radiohead possess in their discography.