Well this is so typically like me. I have found myself thrown into this blogging business with absolutely no prior experience of how it works, what to write about and no general direction of what I’m supposed to be focusing on. With any luck, as the busy month ahead passes and my glorious free summer beckons I will be able to knuckle down and produce some really enjoyable pieces of reading. Until then, here we go, a quick look at why the following band is the most perfect, brilliant, mind-blowing music outfit in the world and why you should listen to them right now…
Radiohead
Let’s take a trip back to the 90’s. Grunge was the king in the music industry, long haired, jumper-wearing bands slouching around drawling Americanised lyrics lazily into a microphone. You may be forgiven for letting Radiohead’s first album, the rather by-the-numbers Pablo Honey, pass you by. It did little different to anything that had come before it, and to this day remains a tiny imperfection on a glorious golden coat that dangles over Thom Yorke’s shoulders. Then The Bends came out and the world turned upside down. The first time I listened to The Bends I experienced a feeling of euphoria and discovery I imagine hasn’t been felt by a human being since George Harrisson first set eyes on a sitar. Everything I knew about music was thrown out of the window. Never before had I heard anything as deeply moving as Street Spirit (Fade Out), a droning, weary ballad that ponders the very futility of life itself. You begin to see where Radiohead’s reputation of bringers-of-gloom comes from.
Just when you thought minds couldn’t be shattered into any smaller pieces, Radiohead went and casually tossed another rock classic to their fans in the shape of OK Computer, then set about buying as many keyboards as they could afford and making their guitars sound like elephants. Alright, it may be a slight exaggeration, but it is slight. 2000’s Kid A and 2001’s Amnesiac were, to me, another The Bends experience all over again. A blend of smart, considered rock (Optimistic, Knives Out), strange time-signatured, arpeggio-filled, dream inspired lullabies (Pyramid Song, In Limbo), and all-out, completely bonkers experiments with sound such as Everything In Its Right Place or Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors, “Kid Amnesiac” as I like to refer to the albums, was everything I had not yet known was possible in music rolled up and squeezed into two discs.
It’s easy to assume the genius behind the music of Radiohead is its complexity. Songs such as 2+2 = 5 can astound even the studious of musicians with the number of signature changes and subtle fills. In reality what makes Radiohead, in my opinion, the greatest band in the world today is their ability to make the simple so very deceivingly complex. For example in Reckoner, from their latest, industry-revolutionising album In Rainbows, guitarist Ed O’Brien does very little for nearly four minutes other than play a tambourine to the beat. To the sort of listener who has a predilection for five minute solos, roaring vocals or thundering double bass drums, this would appear to be a menial task, a waste of space, a useless job that could be made redundant by simply putting an extra microphone on the hi-hat when recording. I dare these people to try and find a version of the track without the tambourine. They may just find that in the hands of Radiohead, the tambourine becomes not only a more important instrument, but one of the key instruments keeping the rhythm in the song, certainly more so than the bass. That is why Radiohead are Gods amongst men, and that is why they must continue to amaze me with new, exciting sounds for years to come.
