Radiohead / The Machinists 1992 - 2007
1992 - 1997
01 prove yourself / drill ep may 92
02 creep / a side september 92
03 faithless the wonder boy / b side february 93
04 thinking about you / pablo honey february 93
05 my iron lung / a side october 94
06 high and dry / a side march 95
07 killer cars / b side march 95
08 bones / the bends march 95
09 just / the bends march 95
10 street spirit (fade out) / the bends march 95
11 talk show host / b side january 96
12 banana co. / b side january 96
13 paranoid android / a side june 97
14 a reminder / b side june 97
15 subterranean homesick alien / ok computer june 97
16 exit music (for a film) / ok computer june 97
17 karma police / ok computer june 97
18 no surprises / ok computer june 97
19 lucky / ok computer june 97
2000 - 2007
01 everything in its right place / kid a October 00
02 how to disappear completely / kid a October 00
03 optimistic / kid a October 00
04 pyramid song / a side may 01
05 packt like sardines in a crushd tin box / amnesiac june 01
06 you and whose army / amnesiac june 01
07 i might be wrong / amnesiac june 01
08 true love waits / i might be wrong november 01
09 2+2=5 / hail to the thief june 03
10 go to sleep / hail to the thief june 03
11 we suck young blood / hail to the thief june 03
12 there there / hail to the thief june 03
13 i am a wicked child / b side august 03
14 i will (LA version) / b side november 03
15 fog(again) / com lag: may 04
16 15 steps / in rainbows october 07
17 bodysnatchers / in rainbows october 07
18 reckoner / in rainbows october 07
19 jigsaw falling into place / in rainbows october 07
There has always been something slightly uncool and nerdy about Radiohead. It’s not the Oxfordshire public school thing, the name picked from a Talking Heads title, or even the unnecessary ‘h’ in Thom Yorke’s name. It’s more to do with the way Radiohead leave all the hipster celebrity stuff to the Sonic Youth’s of this world, and nail their music to the mast labeled ‘important’. Its this that makes them so ‘middlebrow’, a self-seriousness harking back to seventies prog rock and in particular, Pink Floyd, to whom Radiohead have been compared so many times by lazy arses.
But you know what, middlebrow is absolutely fine. Infact, the greatest music always ends up in that category, if not by design, then certainly by acclamation. Even Sonic Youth, god bless them, despite their best efforts, have become middlebrow. But Radiohead top the lot, not bad for a group arriving on the back of ‘Creep’, a post Nirvana ‘grunge ballad’ originally ignored at home but embraced in America. Infact, despite sharing similar middlebrow influences as Nirvana (Pixies, REM and naturally Sonic Youth), it was Radioheads very Englishness that saved them from a Kurt Cobain type torment.
By 1995’s The Bends, their English art rock inclinations were coming to the fore, but it was OK Computer, with its themes of alienation and technology that transformed them utterly and completely. The anthemic nature of their earlier music began to be complicated in earnest, although on the surface it was not immediately obvious. Just one step from joining U2 as the biggest band on the planet, they changed direction quite unexpectedly, deconstructing their old sonic plans for Kid A/Amnesiac, each member becoming a non musician producer/catalyst by abandoning their traditional instrumental role.
In truth, those two releases and all that has followed are not as radical as they’ve been portrayed. Far from mere electronic doodlings, the tracks rarely abandon a loose song structure but do demand attention from the listener. But Radiohead are relentlessly bleak, dislocated, dispossessed, numb, impotent and paralysed, successfully detailing our natural responses to a dog eat dog world, where the logical impulse is to withdraw and disengage. They are everything a modern band should be. And that is why ‘middlebrow’ is so important or at least upper middlebrow (Radiohead, Bjork, Nick Cave, Bowie, Gabriel, Kate Bush et al) as opposed to lower middle brow, which is Coldplay.
March 2008.
