Tag Archives: radiohead

#785: Radiohead – Lull

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Originally released as a B-side on the ‘Karma Police’ single back in 1997, ‘Lull’ was remastered and re-released alongside the other OK Computer era tracks on the album’s 20th anniversary edition in 2017. That was the first time I’d ever heard the song and, for a while, it was a favourite that I would repeatedly listen to. With its short length and simple structure – only consisting of two verses and two choruses before finishing – you can probably tell why it was left off the album, but it certainly makes it stand out from many other Radiohead tracks.

Immediately, the song starts off with a shimmering arpeggiated guitar chord created and played by guitarist Ed O’Brien. This riff is practically what the whole song is based on, and as those opening seconds continue a sudden xylophone comes in the mix on the right before a harmonising Thom Yorke joins in. The track describes a narrator who seems to freak out or overreact at the smallest of things compared to another who ‘wakes and smiles’ and ‘stops the crowd’, I’m guessing with a sense of calmness and ease. The narrator seems to put his irritable state down to the stress and tension and his ability to get distracted by things that shouldn’t really matter in the chorus, and states that he’s in a lull to separate himself from everything. The rhythm section comes in after the first chorus, and the track’s then given this nice groove to really set things off. There are parts where Yorke sings in his lower register, which is always a warm welcome in any Radiohead song.

I think I read somewhere that the band had given thought to making an album full of shorter 2/3 minute songs; if that were to have happened, ‘Lull’ was a sign of what would be expected. I don’t know whether that’s true. It’s certainly an interesting idea. It’s a song that no one knows a lot about. The band have never performed it live. But I reckon it’s a bit of a hidden gem in their discography.

#784: Radiohead – Lucky

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Although Radiohead’s ‘Lucky’ is a track that will come to mind whenever you think of the band’s 1997 album OK Computer – seeing as it’s one of the songs on that record – it’s a song that was written and recorded when the group were on tour in 1995, promoting their second album The Bends. The high pitched squealing that can be heard at the beginning and throughout was created at a soundcheck by guitarist Ed O’Brien, and the band decided to develop the song around it. The song was recorded in five hours on 4th September 1995 and released on a charity compilation in the same week. The band thought it was the best song they had ever done to that point; Thom Yorke later stated that it set the direction for what the band were to do on their next record.

You could argue it’s a bit of a cop out to include a track that had already been out for two years on your new album, but somehow ‘Lucky’ manages to fit perfectly in its place on OK Computer. It’s a very cliché thing to say – though when it came to this song when listening to the album for the first time when I was 14 or 15, it was certainly unlike any song I had heard prior to it. It was a track that had a definite emotional weight to it. I thought ‘yeah, this is some sophisticated music’. It was definitely different to what was usually on MTV2. The song’s lyrics are unusually optimistic for a Radiohead song, but then they’re countered by the minor key, sad-sounding chords that make things sound like something terrible is about to happen. It’s very conflicting but it works tremendously and is a change from the usual sad/bad lyrics with happy music dynamic.

A list of elements that I thoroughly enjoy about this one: Thom Yorke’s vocal (a GLOOOO-rious daaaay), the ghostly choir-like keyboards that come in during the second verse, every crash cymbal hit during the choruses pack a punch, the descending chord progression of the bridge and its climactic transition into the instrumental end… You’ve got to hear it for yourself, it would be a good use of 4 minutes and 20 seconds.

#752: Radiohead – Little by Little

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A while ago when going through the Radiohead subreddit, I came across a thread which was based on the topic of the best/worst songs from the band’s album The King of Limbs. There seemed to be a consensus that today’s song, ‘Little by Little’, was considered to be one of the worst ones on there.

I went back to the album at some point last year, and when it got to the track I didn’t think it was bad. The climbing guitar hook was catchy instantly, its drop D tuning automatically gave this dark vibe, and Thom Yorke does his thing of singing words but bot really enunciating. It’s a very decent track.

There is a live performance of it that is considered by many to be much better than the version that appeared on the album. I have come to agree with that opinion. Their live take of the track, which you will see below, just edges it out. I like that it’s a bit slower and it feels a lot less busier than the studio version. You can actually hear the bass too. In the end, there are two versions of this song that everyone can get into so I feel like we’re all winners here.

#741: Radiohead – Lift

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For a long time, ‘Lift’ by Radiohead was considered to be one of the best songs the band never released. In 1996 the band would perform it live, and it grew to be a very popular track among fans. Their take of it at Dutch festival Pinkpop that year seems to be the one where fans go ‘Yeah, that’s how the track should always be played.’ The group revisited it during a live route in 2002 when they were getting to ready to work on what became Hail to the Thief. It still never saw the light of day on any album of theirs.

That was, however, until 2017 when the band revealed that it would finally be officially released on the OK Computer 20th anniversary reissue alongside two other unreleased songs, ‘I Promise’ and ‘Man of War’ (also known as ‘Big Boots’ to many). Fans were shocked and stunned and, as you can see, very welcome to this announcement. If you care to know I felt at the time, I did feel that it was pretty cool that this was happening. It was always clear that the track was a very good song, and it was worked during the sessions for OK Computer. There probably would have been some kind of outrage if it hadn’t been included.

The big difference though is that the ‘Lift’ we got didn’t have the same energy and power that those live performances did. It was much more calmer, seemed a lot more resigned and sadder as a result. Still, I believe Thom Yorke – or at least another member of the band – said that this was the way the song should always have been played. Despite its restrained performance and almost raw mixing, it definitely still retains the anthemic quality that endeared it to so many Radiohead fans in the first place.

I lurk on the band’s subreddit, and I recall seeing a few fans who were still just a bit let down by the version that was released. So when 18 hours of the band’s sessions for OK Computer which included this other version of ‘Lift’ leaked onto the Internet last year….. well it was like a birthday and Christmas rolled into one.

#736: Radiohead – Life in a Glasshouse

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Continuing their run of awesome album closers, ‘Life in a Glasshouse’ is the last track on Radiohead’s album Amnesiac and, in a way, put an ominous end to their remarkable reinvention era of 2000/2001 when they wowed critics and confused listeners with the aforementioned album and Kid A eight months earlier. Obviously Radiohead always reinvent themselves in some way, but in this period people really questioned what the band were trying to do with this new anti-rock route they were going with.

‘Glasshouse’ is probably the group’s most unique track. There is no other song in Radiohead’s discography that is like it at all. And that’s not me trying to say that it differs in just a minor area from their other material. The track is this sad-sounding, jazzy funeral dirge complete with clarinets, trumpets and a huge big band section. I seem to remember lying in bed, half-asleep, listening to Amnesiac for the first time in late 2012. Though I thought the rest of the album was alright (an opinion I still hold today, it’s probably one of my least favourite Radiohead albums) this track stood out to me as a highlight while also bringing a downer to whatever dream I was having. The track itself is inspired by an incident where a wife of a famous actor covered her windows with newspapers to prevent paparazzi and the tabloids from getting any proper photos of her. But Thom Yorke’s delivery on ‘someone’s listening in’, especially at the end, is very creepy. Makes me feel like I’m being watched. We are all being watched in some way.

Because the jazzy instrumental was provided by a specific band, led by musician Humphrey Lyttelton who passed away in 2008, the band have never performed the song live. Except for that one time that they did in 2001. Below is Lyttleton’s band and Radiohead on Later with Jools Holland performing the track.