Tag Archives: radiohead

#1045: Radiohead – Planet Telex

Leave a reply

Was thinking about how I properly became aware of this song for a couple days before writing. I mean, that’s usually how it goes for the rest of the posts on here. But for this one, my mind had to wander for just a little bit. But then it all came flooding back. I got The Bends for, I think, my 12th birthday. Only really wanted it for ‘Just’ and ‘Street Spirit’ – if you’re wondering where ‘Just’ is in this series, it kinda lost its effect on me over time (sorry) – so I probably listened to it just once and never put the CD in my computer again. ‘Planet Telex’ starts the album off. But as I had forgotten how the song went, I had no idea who was singing in the sample used in the track ‘Letter from God to Man’ by British hip-hop duo Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, when the video for it was making the rounds on MTV2 back in the day. Maybe 2008 or so. Revisiting that track to remind myself how it went, I never realised, when I was a young lad, just how many elements of the original song it used. But then a couple years later I probably heard the track on iTunes when I was simultaneously playing FIFA and thinking, ‘Wow, this song’s… damn good.”

So, yeah. Radiohead’s album The Bends was released in March 1995, just three weeks before I arrived on this earth, if anyone wanted know. Being recognised as the ‘Creep’ band for the few years prior to its arrival, I can only imagine fans/critics’ reaction to the record when it dropped. Pablo Honey as a whole is pretty forgettable. Bit derivative of the American ’90s grunge/alt rock thing going on at the time. I don’t even like ‘Creep’ all that much. Then The Bends comes and it sounds like a completely different band. It just blew what came before it out of the water, from the production to the songwriting to the artwork. The whole package. It all begins with ‘Planet Telex’, firstly with this rolling wind-like sound effect that then gives way to a booming drum loop and piano drenched with tremolo/delay effects. The drums, bass and pianos drop out to introduce the guitars and the first appearance of Thom Yorke’s vocals on the album, before falling back in with a crash. Everything proceeds on from there. I really adore just the whole sound of this track. Don’t know how to describe it. Either like it’s from the future – it’s all spacey and sort of electronic, quite the difference from a lot of the other songs on the album, or just needs to be played really loudly from the highest rooftop. Really emphatic and so thrilling.

However… upbeat, for lack of a better word, it may sound, I again have only properly become aware of the track’s meaning. At least I want to say I have. Thom Yorke’s telling the listener all these things that you can do, but can’t bring to its full conclusion/potential. Then during the second, he provides options that you have the freedom to do whatever you want with. But in the end, “everything/everyone is broken”. Everything is pointless. Futile. The track seems to be a look at life from quite the depressive point of view. And with the lingering question of “Why can’t we forget?” as the last lyric, the track fades out with a fantastic guitar refrain courtesy of Ed O’Brien and a return of that spacey effect from the very beginning of the song. Couple random facts to close this out. Yorke sang the vocals while drunk and slumped in the corner of the studio. Still able to belt those notes out though. And with some power. And the track was originally called ‘Planet Xerox’ and was changed to ‘Telex’ so late in the process that producer John Leckie wasn’t aware of the name change until the album was released. At least… I really want to say I watched a video where he said that himself.

#1014: Radiohead – Paranoid Android

4 Replies

So, from the list, it appears that Radiohead have quite a few songs beginning with the letter ‘P’. This one right here is a bona-fide classic. At this point, it’s no question how good of a track ‘Paranoid Android’, but I can only imagine how jaw-dropping it was to people who heard when it first dropped back in 1997 as the first single from OK Computer. Being only two years of age at that time, I wouldn’t know about the song for at least another eight/nine years, when the music video would play usually on MTV2 or even VH2. A lot of it was censored. The man’s head popping out of the guy’s stomach was blurred out, and the whole scene where the businessman chops off his arms and legs and the large-chested mermaids was replaced with hastily put together scenes from earlier in the video. Any first time listeners/watchers, you did read that sentence. The whole music video’s a trip.

This track is one of those made up of different sections from unrelated pieces à la ‘Bohemian Rhapsody‘ or ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun‘ that are then brought together to make one composition. What I’ve always appreciated about ‘Paranoid…’ is just how seamlessly each sections transitions into the next. Even in the ‘…Warm Gun’, there are always these abrupt changes when one section changes into the other, and I’ve always felt it to be sometimes an awkward listen. Wikipedia says there are four sections in ‘Paranoid Android’, but I would say there’s three at the most with a little return to the second to close things out. But really the whole thing flows so well, and the whole performance by the band is off the charts.

I think it’s come to the point now where a Radiohead fan wouldn’t be impressed if you told them ‘Paranoid Android’ was your favourite track by the band’s. I’m a Radiohead fan myself, but I don’t even think I’m at the level of some other people that may be existing. They would understand, because they’d have to, but the track is essentially Radiohead encapsulated. Damn, there are just so many moments to pick out from this one as to what makes it so engaging to hear. From the wild guitar freak-outs to Thom Yorke’s vocals to those robotic “I may be paranoid, but no android” that are buried in the mix. To listen to this track for the first time again…

#1008: Radiohead – Palo Alto

Leave a reply

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.

#1007: Radiohead – Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box

Leave a reply

It’s P time. Everytime I start a new section of this, I’m always weary of the amount of typing that I’ve gotta go through. But it has to be done. I’ve had this voice in my head telling me to have this done by the time I’m 30. That gives me just over two years. Maybe that’s pushing it. There’s still so many songs to go. But it’s worth a try. So let’s get restarted.

‘Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box’ is the opening track on Radiohead’s 2001 Amnesiac album, the second in the group’s iconic – for lack of a better word – left-turn experimental phase after Kid A preceded it a few months before. I want to say that it acted as a bit of a message on part of the band that if people who thought Kid A was strange, then they had no idea. No better way to start of an album with looping metallic chimes and electronic bleep-bloops to keep rock fans on their side. As I’ve come to know it though, that wait for some sort of melody or settled rhythm to kick in is well worth it once those (keys? synths?) come in at 36 seconds.

I’ll always remember where I was when I ‘listened’ to Amnesiac for the first time. ‘Listened’ being in quotation marks because I was asleep for the majority of it. It was a tiring day after A-Level preparation in year 13 days, I think I may have been feeling down at that point too, and Spotify had this free trial offer going on. Though I more or less missed the middle part of the record, I remember still being sort of awake during ‘Packt…’ and digging Thom Yorke’s pitch-corrected vocals and the overall glitchy vibe of the entire thing. Then my consciousness faded away gradually, but then suddenly perked up when ‘Life in a Glasshouse’ started. As a result, those two tracks were the ones from the album that I considered its highlights for some time. I’ve come to appreciate a couple more songs from it, but the record isn’t up there in my personal Radiohead album ranking, to be frank. Doesn’t have that good a flow, I feel.

But, ah, the song. What is ‘Packt…’ about? Well, if you’ve been a longtime reader here, you may have come across a few posts where I’ve flat out stated that I’m not much of a lyrics guy. Even when it comes to writing these, I usually see what other people have said and see whether I agree with it or not. In rare cases, there are some tracks where I’ve felt I got the meaning down, which makes sense to me. This isn’t one of those times. Knowing that during the making of Kid A/Amnesiac, Thom Yorke utilised a method of cutting up lyrics and randomly linking them together, there’s a good chance that there isn’t a truly deep meaning to pick up from these sets of lyrics at all. They do sound great together, though, which to me is really all that matters. Oh, actually the main message is Thom Yorke wants some peace – leave him alone. There we go.

#998: Radiohead – Optimistic

Leave a reply

When I heard Kid A for the first time back in 2012, I was left wondering what all the hype was about. Mind you, I was 17 listening to it through tinny headphones and on this website called we7.com (if anyone remembers that – good on you) which I don’t think had the greatest audio quality either. Not like it sounded like complete garbage, but it wasn’t lossless audio. But I distinctly remember the ending harps on ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’ doing their thing and thinking, “This is what’s considered to be one of the greatest albums of all time?” It was naive stuff. I did however have my initial highlights from that first listen. ‘Optimistic’ being one of them. On an album that had no singles to promote it, this one seemed like it would have been the obvious choice had there been one.

Right out of the gate, the track gives you two main melodic hooks that lock themselves in the mental vault. The opening where Thom Yorke howls alongside the guitar riff, which them comes back with a vengeance near the end, and the main guitar riff that occurs during the verses. In those sections, amidst a tribal-like tom-tom drum pattern and grooving bassline, Yorke provides lyrics that to me describe a sort of barren wasteland, devoid of human life, where only the dinosaurs walk, flies buzz around and vultures circle the skies. A bit of an apocalyptic tone going on here, alongside a flip on the “This Little Piggy” nursery rhyme that occurs during the second verse. It’s one of those tracks where it could be about nothing and everything at the same time. Really, the primary line to take into account is what appears in the chorus, inspired by Thom Yorke’s partner at the time who assured that the best he could do was good enough as he was battling severe self-doubt after the draining period of touring OK Computer. It comes as a bit of ray of light amongst the darkness.

It’s been ten years now, but I’ve known for a while at this point that Kid A is a great album. I can understand why it gets the acclaim it does. Not saying it’s one of my favourite albums, but I won’t stop if I let it run from front to back. ‘Optimistic’ comes right in the middle of it, opening its second half, and provides the first moment when you can actually hear an electric guitar on the whole record. The song’s a ball of tension. Carried by the aforementioned drum pattern and bass groove, the track has moments where it opens and closes before really bursting into a release when the cymbals enter the frame for the climactic ending. Brings a very satisfying close to it all. Well, it doesn’t even end there, as there’s another groovy interlude that segues into the album’s next track. That didn’t have to be there, but even that part is something look forward to when I hear this song. So much so I wish they replicated it at their live shows.