Ed Reviews The Classics
OK Computer: Much more than OK
Goddamn, this album had me headbanging through its entirety while simultaneously contemplating the effect that technology has had on our lives, something that I can confidently say no other album has ever made me do.
Radiohead’s third album is a truly magnificent piece of art on every level. It’s a progressive rock powerhouse that delivers sonically, lyrically and compositionally.
The band uses a really interesting array of sounds throughout the course of the record. Throughout the whole album, you’re getting hit with the sounds of a choir, random computer noises and a nice variety of beeps. On paper, it sounds like a chaotic mess, but in practice, it works like a charm. The human voices juxtaposed against the harsh tech noises create a fitting sonic background for Thom Yorke’s lyrics about technology’s effect on the human experience.
Each song on the album feels like an absolutely necessary part of the composition, and nothing feels extraneous or out of place. But at the same time, each song is strong enough that you can enjoy it on its own without the context of the rest of the album. I think that this is the superior way to put a concept album together. Every song is part of a puzzle, but the puzzle pieces themselves are just as good as the final product.
“Paranoid Android” and “Electioneering” have become the two stand-out songs for me. They both have this great, driving energy behind them and these earworm vocal melodies that just stick in your head for hours on end. “Subterranean Homesick Alien” and “The Tourist” are also excellent examples of how Radiohead accels just as much with a calmer, more mellow energy.
Overall, this album is absolutely phenomenal. I think overall, my initial listening experience suffered from expectations being set too high. I’ve only heard amazing things about this album and at this point I was expecting to hear god speak directly to me. Did god speak directly to me? No. Did I enjoy the album a lot? Yeah absolutely I did.
8/10
