O.K Computer

This album can ask a lot of the listener, but if you can really give into the music and just let it carry you off, you can become so consumed by these songs that you find yourself suddenly opening your eyes at the end of a track, blinking in surprise at the fact that you are actually back in the real world. They tear your soul open, and force you to confront those feelings for which you probably don't even have a name. Despair perhaps, numbness perhaps, but above all, the way it can sometimes feel just to be a human in the 20th Century.

It's hard to pick a stand out track (even the pretty much tune free "Fitter, Happier" makes for compelling listening), but "Exit Music (for a film)" is one of the most touching, fragile and beautiful songs you will ever hear. When you consider Thom Yorke wrote it as a soundtrack to the end of Romeo and Juliet, the lyrics become even more intense; "Today, we escape, we escape". "Don't lose your nerve. I can't do this - alone".

If you have ever felt alone, disenfranchised, pointless or depressed, this record will connect with you in a way you may have never thought possible. And that contact will make you feel better. Less alone. It makes you feel like there are other people out there who feel like this. It's a record which takes you on a journey through the darker parts of the soul. A record about how it feels to be human.

Oh, and it's very, very good (did I mention that?).


My Tuppence   March 4, 2009
R. Davies (Wales)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

Whenever I'm asked what my favourite album ever made is, after much sighing and chin stroking, I almost inevitably end up at Radiohead's magnificent third album. Perhaps it's because it's the only one of the candidates to have been released during my lifetime, I don't know. But there you are - it's the greatest album ever made!

Love's Forever Changes is certainly a candidate for the above question, and while it may seem bizarre at first, I think a number of parallel can be drawn between the two.

FC came at the end of the summer of love, and was the first album to hint at the darkness that lay ahead and the unwelcome realities the movement was blind to. OKC arrived at the height of Britpop, and while the Gallagher boys were in No. 10 with the Blairs, Radiohead were also hinting at something darker, the alienation, cultural sterility and disenfranchising of the soul being felt in a digital age.

OKC can at times be cold and sterile, but it is permeated with a resonating beauty throughout. It is perfectly of a time, and yet timeless.

The songs, as you'd expect are superb, but as with all great albums the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

The only point where OKC loses something is when Radiohead move from the personal to the political on Electioneering. Maybe it's there to remind people what middle-of-the-road sounds like? It's more than remedied by Climbing Up The Walls which follows. A dark, brooding claustrophobic monster of a sound, it's the entrance music I would have I was a boxer!

From the riff of Airbag and the multi-faceted genius of Paranoid Android, through the atmosphere of Exit Music, incredible musicality of Let down and the singalong anthem of Karma Police to the melancholy but uplifting No Surprises, the soaring, magnificent Lucky to the epic closer The Tourist, Radiohead do not put a foot wrong.

Radiohead had just spent all the money from the bends on the kit needed to self-produce an album in Jane Seymour's mantion. They had creative carte blanch and this was their chance to go stratospheric. Boy did they take it.

Parlophone said it was commercial suicide. That seemed wrong at the time and seems even more so 12 years on. The success of this album gives me faith in the Great British public!


the great transformation begins...   March 11, 2010
J. Hood (Reading, Berkshire)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

With Radiohead's two previous efforts (Pablo Honey and The Bends), they carved themselves a comfortable place in modern 'alt' rock. They were moderately popular, got themselves very posotive reviews, and wrote some classic alt anthems which still stand up today. They were basically britain's answer to america's grunge, with obvious influence from bands like Pixies and REM. Then along came OK Computer, and radiohead were never quite the same again. With the new album came a new concept, new sounds, a new range of instrumentation and experementation. The band unleashed a sprawling, a less accesible, but tantalising thrilling new album, which nobody was expecting. The album focuses on modern technology, and it's affect upon modern life. It condemns the ways in which the late 20th century played itself out, the over-relying on technology, the de-huminisation and computerisation of the new, cold world. It's a pre-millennial, paranoid and threatning world, where it's either succumb to the power of technology or die.
The album digs at this, and at the lives of the soul-sucked people who inhabit this modern wasteland, the broken and the lost, the paranoid and the insane, the deluded and the doomed. It condemns the lives of the people in the big, safe houses, who succumb to routine and the technology which turns them, effectively, computers themselves. But this album's ideology and meanings isn't the only thing that makes it so important: so does the music itself.
The album ranges from the more radio friendly tunes ('no surprises') which juxtapose barbed, desperate lyrics with beautiful gentle melodies, to the more left field, bizzare tracks ('fitter, happier'), which Radiohead delved deeper into in later records. These more left field tracks use clicks, whirrs, buzzes electronic backgrounds, to create this sometimes unsettling atmosphere. for example, 'fitter happier' is a 2-minute piece, with an automated voice (Thom Yorke used mac-speak for this) reading out the life of one of the many people that the album digs at, as the orchestra behind it swells as the song builds. It's simple, yes, but also one of the most shattering and beautiful things i've heard in recent years. Then the album offers up the modern greats, mainly 'Paranoid Android', what I consider to be one of the best songs of the decade. It's a 6 minutes fluxating, swirling mini-epic, much like Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' in it's change of pace and distinct sections. It starts slow, twisted, odd, and yes, paranoid. But chimes in soon with one of the most deliciously snarling guitar riffs, giving the song instant power and newfound bitterness anger. The song is almost like a microcosm for the entire album itself, it represents everything the album is trying to say. y'know that feeling you get when you hear a song you know is special for the first time, like the opening to Bob Dylan's classic 'like a rolling stone', or The doors' 'The end'. that's the feeling you get after hearing android, like you need to sit down take a breather. And this is only three songs in. Soon we have the achingly beautiful 'exit music', which is basic but simply wonderful. There is no filler material, no wasted second, no moment that you won't want to replay again and again. It's a unique and thrilling ride, that both ugly and beautiful, simaltaneously. This may not be everyone's album, I mean, some may find it too left-field, they may demand the big guitar anthems. Or some people simply don't get it. It's hard to choose my favourite disc from Radiohead's 7 near perfect albums, but for scope, ambition and overall magnificence, it's hard to deny OK computer is their best, and not only their best, but one of the best albums of the 20th century. which i'm sure you're sick of hearing by now.


Why'd I leave it so long?   April 12, 2008
Jayy Mannon (Glam, Wales)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful

After being a fan of music and in particular rock music for many years i finally decided to give radiohead a chance and bought ok computer, i'm not really sure why I waited so long but they never seemed to appeal to me, maybe it was a lack of instantly catchy tunes, who knows. So i insert the CD, first listen i was moderately impressed and went and bought 'the bends', having now listened to both albums uncountable times i have really been drawn in by the radiohead spell and find every listen reveals something new, either in the lyrics or music, a new understanding is achieved, it onlys leaves me wondering why the hell I left it so long before I conceded. For people who may face the same situation the two albums mentioned are definitely the places to start and give them at least 6 or 7 listens each, if you're not appreciating the music by then maybe try 10 or 20 listens, it will happen eventually. Overall a monumental record which quite rightly is widely regarded as one of the best of all time, personal favourites are 'Airbag' and 'Karma Police'. 10 out of 10.


tender, lovingly created and provocative   October 20, 2009
T. E. Roberts
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

i have listened to this again and again and i never get bored of it. airbag has a touch of break beat at times, tonnes of verve and a powerful end guitar solo. paranoid android is 3 different songs melded into one.

for me one of the stand out tracks is subterrenean homesick alien. it's a jazz tinged song with thought provoking dreamy lyrics, a hypnotic soothing drum roll and a earthy, psychadelic guitar part full of high pitched fretwork and delicate string changes. exit music (for a film) is rather sad and sounds as though it was written by a tortured soul and let down is full of emotional torment, tinged with an almost voodoo like bass line and psychadelic effects.

karma police has an unusual twist toward the end as it mutates into an almost uplifting ballad after starting as a rather orwellian affair and fitter happier is a rather humerous stephen hawingesque take on goal orientated perfectionism. "keep in contact with old friends, enjoy a drink now and then"

electioneering has a touch of "heavy" or thrash metal at times and hints at radiohead's anti government stance and no surprises is played with a glockenspiel type afair, hinting at radiohead's angst over finding a quiet location to record the album. lucky is part of yorke's attempt to transale his dilike of travelling into song. it has a dark and powerful guitar solo, gives credit to yorke's friends and gives pink floyd's dark side of the moon studio effects a huge pat on the back.

the tourist is a slow, beautifully crafted affair full of feeling and understated fret work. yorke's voice soars on this track and the interplay between the 5 musicians, their understanding for one another's timing during the song and the spiritual crescendo towards the end of the song give it added zest

all in all something that..for once actually lives up to the hype, written by musicians who actually care, who respect each other and love their career's