Tag Archives: the bends

#1307: Radiohead – Sulk

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Now, I do know how Radiohead fans tend to feel about ‘Sulk’, which is that a large majority of them consider it to be one of the worst tracks on The Bends. Not because it’s bad. But when in an album including songs like ‘Fake Plastic Trees’, ‘Just’, ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)‘ and others that I would have covered on here, it seems to pale in comparison. A comment I can remember being agreed was that it sounded like a leftover from the band’s debut album Pablo Honey, or could have fit better on that album. It’s too normal. Sounds like any other ’90s alternative rock song that bands were making at the time. ‘Sulk’, in general, in my opinion, is much, much better than… probably 10 out of the 12 tracks that make up Pablo Honey, so I disagree with that particular take. And, yeah, it follows a pretty normal song structure for Radiohead song. Doesn’t stop it from being pretty darn good, I tell you.

I got The Bends as a Christmas gift in 2006, my request inspired by the number of times I’d seen Radiohead’s music videos on MTV2 up to that point. I might have said it was a birthday gift in a previous post, but my “xmas list” sent to my cousin in my Outlook email says otherwise. Back then I was 11 and merely asking for albums just for the singles, which is what I got from The Bends and sort of left it on the shelf. I may have listened through on my PlayStation 2 when I was 12 or something too. It wasn’t really until 2016 when a new Radiohead album was on the horizon, that I was at my desk at work and decided to listen through The Bends from front to back and really pay attention to it. It was honestly though that one playthrough that ‘Sulk’ seemed like an obvious track that I should have been liking for years up to that point. I extend that notion to fellow album tracks, ‘Bones’ and ‘Black Star’. If I could do all this again, they would have their own posts too.

‘Sulk’ was apparently written in response to the 1987 Hungerford massacre that happened in England. You never would have guessed it. I certainly didn’t. Listening to this earlier live version of the track does seem to reveal that origin of inspiration a lot more. The final lyric being “Just shoot your gun”. Clearly, some changes in the words happened along the way. In its final iteration, it seems to be about the universal feeling of depression, the hold it can have on a person and a wish for it to subside. Just so happens that the band provide a really upbeat performance behind it. There’s a key change and everything that occurs at the instrumental break and lasts through the final chorus, where Thom Yorke sings a high B note without falsetto. It’s a pretty magical moment. Unfortunately though, the song as a whole came to be the one the band themselves disliked the most. This probably also plays into fans’ opinions on the song as well. As a result, it hasn’t been played live since 1995. I’ll have a lot of love for it for a long time.

#1297: Radiohead – Street Spirit (Fade Out)

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On Radiohead’s The Bends, there’s a theme about the fear of getting old that shows it’s face throughout the record. On ‘Bones’, Thom Yorke sings about not wanting to be “crippled and cracked”. On ‘Fake Plastic Trees’, he talks about gravity always winning in reference to aging women who went through plastic surgery in the 1980s. Thom Yorke would have been 25/26 when working on the lyrics for the songs that would make up The Bends. But even then, I think it’s fair to say he might have been going through some existential crisis of some kind at the time. I think as we all do when we get to that mid-20s period. And closing the album off is a song about a thing we all know is certain in life. Death. The track is ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’, one of the group’s most sombre numbers which also happens to be one of their most popular too.

When it comes to me, well, I think I first came to know about the song when its music video played on MTV2, or one of those alternative music video channels, back in the 2000s. In between 2003 – 2007, when the band were on a bit of a hiatus, a Radiohead music video showing up on those places was a regular occurrence. Probably because the band were known to have some of the coolest of those types of media. The video for ‘Street Spirit’, with the whole manipulation of time thing going on in its scenes, was cool to witness to the small kid I was at that time. Thought it was so cool, in fact, that I tried to find the video online, which in a pre-YouTube world was very hard to do. Can only imagine what it must have felt like seeing something like it in 1996, when the song was released as a single. The track may be one of the band’s darkest. But man, if it isn’t catchy in its own uniquely bleak way. When that opening, circular guitar riff gets going, it’s very hard to stop listening to everything else that follows.

In the first verse, Thom Yorke depicts an image of a helpless figure feeling closed in by the houses that surround them. The second sees him referring to a machine that can’t communicate “the thoughts and the strain [he’s under]”. This got me thinking, maybe he’s talking about his guitar. Maybe he was really going through some things at the time. Or maybe he’s taking a point of view of a general machine used by an employee somewhere. After which he suggests we unite and be people of the world before we all end up underground. And in the third verse, he brings up imagery of cracked eggs and dying birds screeching through their lasts breaths. I did mention this song was bleak, didn’t I? Despite all this, the music is extremely infectious. You’ve got the riff I talked about in the last paragraph, but then there are the “Ah-na-na” vocals during the instrumental breaks. And then there’s Yorke’s actual vocal take, which just soars over everything. He changed up the way he sang from OK Computer onwards, so to have that Pablo Honey/Bends era style finish on this track is a massive way to go out. All very morose, but a lot of people love it, including myself, to the point that, if given an opportunity, there will sing it even louder than Yorke at a live performance. Like in the one below.

#1045: Radiohead – Planet Telex

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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.

#917: Radiohead – (Nice Dream)

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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.

My iPod #352: Radiohead – Fake Plastic Trees

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Sorry for the late post. I don’t feel well today. I wasn’t sure whether this would come out. The probability that this won’t be a very good read is high. But I will still do it instead of saving it for tomorrow, just because I feel that it is my duty.

So this is “Fake Plastic Trees”, a song and single from “The Bends” – Radiohead’s second album. A nice thing about this one is that it isn’t like any other single I’ve heard before. It’s slow-paced, contains weird futuristic keyboard sounds and is, for the most part, very subdued. That is until about halfway through when a note sung by Thom Yorke transforms into a snarl, the rest of the band come in, a guitar solo buried in the mix arrives a little late which results in a section which reminds me of the elevator breaking through the ceiling at the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That section ends almost as soon as it starts, and goes quiet again. Thom sings the last few lines, the keyboards fade out…. a glorious song is over.