To call OK Computer a great album is an understatement on par with “Jesus is a pretty popular guy.” Especially around Christmas. The album, ranked by many as the best of the distant, now seemingly archaic decade of the 1990’s, was the culmination of a band putzing around its own creative potential for a few albums, then, each member at once, pouncing on that potential, ripping it to shreds like hyenas and emerging from the fight with scratches and cuts and one of the most gorgeous, haunting and classic rock albums of all time. Is there a song in the rock’n’roll canon that’s more of a mental-musical tapeworm than “Karma Police”? Is there a guitar riff as ragged and tearing and high-beams-blinding as that of “Electioneering”? I dare you to find one. And if you did, it’d likely also be by Radiohead.
Thing is, OK Computer was almost too good, because it effectively cast Radiohead into the spotlight as “Best Band in the World,” a title that, until only recently, with SPIN Magazine’s ballsy and long overdue article busting rock myths, was even questioned. In this decade, so very nearing its close as you read this, appreciation for Radiohead has been elevated so high it can be summed up with one simple phrase: “Well, of course you do.” Continue reading
