Radiohead. Radiohead. Radiohead: A Semi-Obsessive Plea

Even a Culture Guerilla needs to swoon sometimes.

And swooning is what I’m prepared to do this week. Doctor’s orders. I’m recovering from an illness through a bout of antibiotics, and my doctor told me it’s imperative that I lay off being critical until I’m fully recovered. So, for my health, here is my focus: Radiohead, the greatest band of a generation (no debate needed), whose King of Limbs tour is slated to hit the Tampa Bay Times Forum on Feb. 29.

But what’s so great about Radiohead? It’s a question posed to me often by Radiohead haters, most recently by UT poetry professor Erica Dawson. These haters will usually reference Radiohead’s (comparatively) pedestrian first single “Creep,” a song the band itself somewhat disowned, as representative of Radiohead’s entire oeuvre. But that’s like saying “Love Me Do” is a sufficient representation of the whole Beatles catalog. Not so.

However, I feel like a sketchy cult member when formulating an answer to the haters: “You can’t, like, explain the greatness of Radiohead logically, man; it’s, like, the spirit of Radiohead must be felt, man.” And so on. Indeed, despite my own pseudo-spiritual copouts, Radiohead does elicit a kind of religious response from their followers. I saw this firsthand the last time Radiohead came to Tampa, 2008’s In Rainbows tour. I went with Chris, the drummer of my teenage rock band, and watched with amusement as Radiohead instilled in him a sort of reverence I’d never known him for before. He wept. He swayed his hands in the air.

He respectfully removed his cap when Radiohead’s “The National Anthem,” from Kid A (2000), played. It was totally awesome and weird and probably something he wouldn’t want me to publish in print and on the Internet for all to see. Too late. (Though I will add that The Minaret won’t be the first news source to broadcast my friend’s love for Radiohead to the world: The St. Pete Times once quoted Chris as saying, “You have no idea how much I listen to [Radiohead]; I listen to them probably every day.”)

So, I guess I’m an evangelist. This one’s for you, Radiohead haters (and I’m looking at you, Professor Dawson): Radiohead’s five greatest albums, and why you must get them immediately.

1. OK Computer (1997). This album is probably the eponymous Radiohead album, if you could only choose one. “In an interstellar burst, I am back to save the universe,” opens the album’s first track, “Airbag.” A loosely cyclical concept album on the anxieties of modernity, globalization, technology and the excesses of capitalism, OK Computer also simply sounds like nothing else. The unorthodox composition and musical arrangements of classic tracks like “Paranoid Android,” which represented a drastic departure from the band’s previous release, The Bends (1995), permanently pulled Radiohead out of the shadow of “Creep,” and established them as premier innovators rather than simply excellent songwriters and performers. OK Computer spawned numerous imitators, like Muse and Coldplay, but despite these bands’ best efforts to appropriate the spirit of OK Computer, none have recreated it.

2. The Bends (1995). The Bends, which is more conventional but no less excellent than most other Radiohead releases, must be put in context with the aftermath of the American success of “Creep.” Lumped in, wrongly, with the Seattle grunge movement, Radiohead had been pegged as a likely one-hit-wonder. Then came The Bends, which produced a new set of hits in “Fake Plastic Trees,” “High and Dry” and “Street Spirit (Fade Out).” Though sonically not a radical change from Radiohead’s uneven debut Pablo Honey (1993), The Bends just perfects the sound. Fusing the grandiose qualities of arena rock with the angst of grunge and the barrenness of 80s alternative, those with more populist tastes may want to begin with The Bends.

3. Kid A (2000). Here’s where things get interesting. Like many great but nonetheless difficult artists before them, Radiohead refused to ride the gravy train by making a sonic sequel to OK Computer. Instead, they took the technological experimentation of OK Computer to a new extreme, in essence creating a near-totally electronic album. Suddenly, Radiohead was no longer a guitar band.

Not only that, but the songs themselves come off as intentionally difficult. Yet, a close listen to tracks like “Optimistic” and “Idioteque” show that the songcraft is solid, and they yield to those willing to wade through Kid A’s layers of electronica.

4. Hail to the Thief (2003). With a title inspired by an anti-Bush chant popularized in opposition to the contested 2000 United States presidential election, Hail to the Thief may be Radiohead’s darkest release. Nonetheless, it signals a reconciliation between Radiohead’s earlier guitar-driven work and the electronic experiments that followed. Hail to the Thief, especially tracks like “2+2=5 (The Lukewarm)” and “Go to Sleep,” represents the most coherent example of the general Radiohead “sound” accumulated through the band’s years of experimentation.

5. Amnesiac (2001). Recorded at the same time as Kid A, Amnesiac was initially dismissed as the inferior b-sides of the former album. Yet, these supposed “b-sides” have aged well in their own right, and represent a more accessible side of the uncompromising Kid A. “Pyramid Song,” with its hypnotic piano line and sparse arrangement, is perhaps the album’s highlight. Amnesiac became significant because it nearly matched the success of Kid A, despite its seemingly-alienating qualities, proving that Radiohead’s bold evolution of sound was well-founded.

Honorable Mentions: In Rainbows (2007), The King of Limbs (2011), Pablo Honey (1992).

Well, s**t, this seems to be Radiohead’s entire catalog. Have I made my point?

Mikey Angelo Rumore can be reached at michaelangelorumore@gmail.com.