Radiohead’s First Seven Albums
By Marvin Marks on Jun 8, 2010 in Features
To date Radiohead has released seven albums. They may release their eight album sometime this year (according to guitarist Ed O’Brien) so it seems like a reasonable enough time to take a look back at those first seven albums beginning with 1993′s Pablo Honey all the way through 2007′s In Rainbows.
This is easily my least favorite Radiohead album. In fact, it’s the only one I pretty much never listen to. That said, it does contain their most famous song, the massive ’90s hit “Creep” and some other pretty good tunes as well. I like “Lurgee,” “Blowout,” and “Thinking About You” in particular.
Both “Lurgee” and “Blowout” contain some brilliant (the end of “Blowout” is pretty mind melting) moments that foreshadow the great stuff to come. “Thinking About You” doesn’t really have much to do with later Radiohead, but it’s a nice little song anyway.
The growth from Pablo Honey and The Bends is pretty amazing. This was a big leap. To me it’s like going from Please Please Me to Rubber Soul (Beatles references are overused precisely because so many people know the references.)
They go from just a rag tag collection of quite derivative sounding alterna rock (Pablo Honey) to this fully formed album where all of the pieces fit together perfectly. The Bends is still some the favorite album of some fans. Personally, I prefer their more experimental later stuff but I can understand this opinion because I do think it’s the most emotionally powerful album.
I love the atmospherics of The Bends. This concern for the “sound space” that each song is in would definitely continue to be important to the band throughout their next five albums (and I would be surprised if this does not continue to be of importance in their next album.) I think this is something that really set Radiohead apart from other bands of the time. Of course, the excellent songs helped too.
The title track, “Fake Plastic Trees,” “My Iron Lung,” “Just,” and “Street Spirit” are all brilliant and still sound brilliant to me today. These songs have aged remarkably well. Compare them to other mid ’90s stuff and it’s not even close in my view. I’ve also got a soft spot for “High & Dry” even though I’ve heard Thom Yorke say some nasty things about it (something about it sounding like Rod Stewart I think.) “Planet Telex” and “Black Star” are pretty sweet too. Yeah, this is a great album.
And now they go from Rubber Soul to Revolver. This is considered by many to be the greatest album of all time. It takes the ideas from The Bends and takes them as far as they can go. I really do think they took this style as far as it can go with this album, which is why they moved in an entirely new direction for their next album.
Although I’ve been using the Beatles comparisons to show the amazing progress of Radiohead, I think a more apt comparison for this album may be Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. I see this as sort of analogous to that album as far as it being a timeless bit of perfection that will be listened to by people getting high for a very long time.
To be clear I am in no way putting that down, I can imagine some people thinking I mean that as a put-down. I do not. I think it’s amazing to create a recording that continues to effect people in that way long after it was originally recorded.
I won’t even get into mentioning specific songs from this one, it’s really an album. It’s pretty much all amazing and it should be listened to as a whole whenever possible.
You could continue The Beatles comparison here and say this is Radiohead’s Sgt. Pepper. I think there’s some validity to that but it certainly doesn’t really fit in that hole that easily. It doesn’t fit into any holes easily. Any preconceptions. After OK Computer there was a huge amount of pressure on the band to come up with another legendary album.
Of course most of their fans wanted them to make “OK Computer II” but they wanted to move on and do something totally different and Kid A was definitely that. A lot of guitar centric type people pretty much stopped being fans of the band because of this album. On the other hand, they also gained a new group of fans to replace the old.
Personally I love both OK Computer and Kid A. I think they are both perfect in their own way. I would actually say that I go back to Kid A more often than OKC now, I think it’s more subtle nature makes repeat listening more rewarding. And it’s such a unique experience. There’s no other album I own that really sounds much like Kid A.
And yes, I do own Brian Eno’s ’70s albums. I dig those Eno albums a lot, but to me it’s a totally different style. I think it’s quite lazy to say that just because they both combine pop songwriting with electronic music that they are the same thing.
Eno’s stuff is more like a bizarre carnival or something (listening to “Backwater” from Before and After Science now.) Kid A is much darker and much more “serious” sounding to me. I just get a totally different feeling listening to Kid A than I do listening to any other album.
Some folks dismiss Amnesiac as just being the “b-sides” from the Kid A sessions but I think that’s a bit ridiculous. Amnesiac is really it’s own world. It doesn’t flow quite as perfectly as Kid A does but it’s still a great trip. A schizophrenic kind of trip where you don’t know what could possibly come next. Hey, maybe Amnesiac is Radiohead’s White Album? (Yes, I’m definitely taking The Beatles comparisons way too far.)
HTTT contains some great music but I don’t think I’m alone among Radiohead fans for rating it a bit lower than the rest of the band’s post Pablo Honey albums.
I think the big problem with it is that it just seems to “drag” a bit in comparison. If they could have cut those 14 tracks down to 10 or 11 then maybe I’d think more highly of it. That said, I’m not really sure what I’d want to cut. So I don’t have a real fully formed critique of the album and why I don’t like it quite as much.
The thing is, it’s still an awesome album with some amazing songs (I’m a huge fan of the opener “2+2=5″ for instance, I’m listening to that one now and it rocks my face off.) This is just the ridiculous standard Radiohead has set for themselves. Maybe it’s why they’ve only released two albums in the last 9 years (since 2001.)
Their most recent album, In Rainbows, ranks right up there with OK Computer and Kid A in the “perfect album” category to my ears. It’s such an incredibly atmospheric album. And it’s so tight. Every moment seems to lead to the next and every song is essential.
It really fits together as an album with songs that sound like they belong together. Many of the songs on the album use a rather clean electric guitar tone (very jazz guitar) which really works brilliantly for lending a certain cohesiveness (and makes the one song with a really nasty distorted guitar, “Bodysnatchers,” sound that much more effective in comparison.)
Speaking of “Bodysnatchers,” I want to mention that Jonny Greenwood is an amazing guitarist. His playing sounds like no one else. The really twisted tones he gets on this song reminds me of some of the sick sounds he got back on The Bends (on “My Iron Lung” and “Just”) and OK Computer (“Paranoid Android.”)
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