![]() "OK Computer," ostensibly a concept LP about a zombie world of hard law and infernal software, is a song cycle about serial fear and suffocating routine, laid out in mad leaps of melody, tempo and pathos that slowly accrue their queer beauty: the bleak, R.E.M.-ish clatter of "Electioneering," the languid dive of Yorke's croon in the melted-Beatles carol "Lucky." Radiohead try too hard to be nonconformist - as if they're embarrassed to just be *pop* - but ambition hardly makes them ogres. It’s hard to single out one pedal as being the best in a band like Radiohead however, there’s one definite standout pedal moment on OK Computer: Colin Greenwood’s bass playing in ‘Exit Music (For A Film).’ The song’s descent into ‘fuzzed out’ comes courtesy of a Shin Ei Companion Fuzz FY 2, which Greenwood picked up in a pawn shop for 60 back in 1996. ![]() But there is nothing linear about cracking up. "Ambition makes you look very ugly," he sneers amid the "Bohemian Rhapsody"-style seizures of "Paranoid Android," a slur that works both ways if you have major objections to arty sonic clutter and prog-rock pretensions. I stuck with what I consider to be the ‘canonical’ Radiohead albums that is, the big releases you’ve probably heard about even if you’re like me a not a hardcore Radiohead fan 8 albums in total (Pablo Honey, The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A, Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief, In Rainbows, and The King of Limbs). Singer Thom Yorke doesn't pretend to be likable about it, either. "OK Computer" vigorously defies fast analysis, flip judgment and easy interpretation. Radiohead's third album is one of the best rock records of the year in large part because it is the most inscrutable.
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