OK Computer

Next month the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will announce their new inductees, and I'm way behind on discussing this year's. Mostly that has to do with my ambiguity on Radiohead. I'm not sure if I like them or not.

Radiohead don't have a proper greatest hits collection, so I listened to OK Computer, which I have on CD, all week. This is generally acclaimed their best album, and it is a classic, just short of a masterpiece.

My difficulty with Radiohead comes with the basic prejudice I have against electronic music--I prefer the garage band sound, or orchestral. This album has everything, at times sound like Led Zeppelin, other times like The Smiths. Thom Yorke's vocal stylings are not pleasing to my ear, as they have a whining nature to them.

But, OK Computer mixes things to a delightful degree. The most typical track is "Paranoid Android," which begins with what appears to be the voice of some sort of technological being. The album as a whole seems to suggest we should be wary of technology. He goes on:

"When I am king, you will be first against the wall
With your opinion which is of no consequence at all"

The song then breaks into a guitar riff worthy of Jimmy Page (in fact it is Johnny Greenwood), and sounds like the very best classic rock. This makes Radiohead very hard to categorize--as someone said about the plot of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, it's like trying to nail down a blob of mercury.

The other oft-played song on this album is "Karma Police," which in some ways suggests Orwellian overtones:

"Karma police, arrest this man
He talks in maths, he buzzes like a fridge
He's like a detuned radio
Karma police, arrest this girl
Her Hitler hairdo is making me feel ill
And we have crashed her party"

This is immediately followed by "Fitter Happier," which is an electronic voice giving us advice on how to live better that grows increasingly more unhinged:

"concerned (but powerless)
an empowered and informed member of society (pragmatism not idealism)
will not cry in public
less chance of illness
tires that grip in the wet (shot of baby strapped in back seat)
a good memory
still cries at a good film
still kisses with saliva
no longer empty and frantic
like a cat tied to a stick
that's driven into frozen winter shit (the ability to laugh at weakness)"

Toward the end of the album is the very beautiful and poignant "No Surprises."

"A heart that's full up like a landfill
A job that slowly kills you
Bruises that won't heal
 You look so tired, unhappy
Bring down the government
They don't, they don't speak for us
I'll take a quiet life
A handshake of carbon monoxide"

I'm not sure if that last line means suicide, although Yorke's delivery suggests that it does.

I saw Radiohead in concert, way back when. They were an opener for P.J. Harvey, and had just one album to their name, with their biggest hit, "Creep." Looking around the Internet, that album seems to the least liked of their fans.

So Radiohead certainly deserved entry into the Hall, as there experimentation has created new paths in music. But most of they time they do not move me. I listen and appreciate but my heart feels nothing.