“The sound of a brand-new world.” That’s the chorus of 1986’s “Radio Head” from Talking Heads. You can see why Radiohead decided to name themselves after the song. Much of their music conjures up the image of isolated individuals adjusting to a new planet, which is especially fitting since Radiohead’s rise in the ‘90s coincided with the early years of the Internet. And like their fellow inductees Roxy Music, there’s a clairvoyant aspect to Radiohead, as they made 21st century music while it was still the 20th. Their breakthrough 1995 album The Bends starts with the dynamic alternative psychedelia of “Planet Telex,” featuring the unforgettable chorus “Everything is broken/Everyone is broken.” The sentiment is remarkably contemporary, but what equally stands out is the Burt Bacharach-level melody, indicative of their gift for making sorrow sound splendorous.
The title track of The Bends pulls off a similar trick. Grim lyrics like “We don’t have any real friends,” and “I wish it was the ‘60s/I wish I could be happy,” are countered by heavy anthemic rock’n’roll, with a chorus that could’ve been right out of Boston’s first two albums. However, amidst all the glorious despondence, Radiohead can also be stealthily amusing. On the Paul McCartneyish “Karma Police” from 1997’s classic OK Computer, Thom Yorke sings the refrain “This is what you’ll get,” followed by a resigned Yiddish vaudeville piano melody. It brings to mind McCartney and Yiddish theatre legend Fyvush Finkel sitting by a piano and shrugging at each other in a “What’d ya expect?” manner.
The ambient Kid A instrumental “Treefingers” came out in 2000 and aptly comes across as the dawn of a new century. In retrospect, its intense hypnotic calm takes on extra layers of innocence and melancholy, considering the turbulence of the proceeding two decades. Kid A’s Princely “Idioteque” creates an atmosphere of electro-funk paranoia in a Slim Whitman dystopia, with Yorke’s falsetto harmonies and foreboding lines like “Ice age coming/Let me hear both sides” and “We’re not scaremongering/This is really happening.”
The world finally caught up to Radiohead.
Matt Leinwohl