90s best? So close.

When you approach albums like OK Computer, first thing that strikes you is: “how in the world am I going to review this?” Think of it this way, everything that could have been said has already been said before you. Then, almost everyone you want to recommend this album to already owns it. So, what’s the use in you trying, anyway?


The use in you joining the ranks of those who have been there before and have arguably put it better that you will ever be able to, is your unique experience. For why we’re here in the music section? Exactly, because we love music. And it does something to us. Rewriting my old OK Computer review I’m not trying to say anything new or write one of the better reviews out there. What I would want to do is simply share with you how over this time (and it’s been a year now) this album has grown on me, and how it has become a part of my working week. Also, how it might become a part of yours.


Now, without much ado, let’s feed this jukebox a coin and land in the middle of my week.





Wednesday, 10 March 2004, 07.46 am


In an intastella burst
I’m back to save the universe


It’s morning again. Trying hard to open my eyes, I board the bus. My place next to the window in the far rear corner is free. It’s a thirty-minute ride to where I work and I push “play” on my walkman. As the opening chords of Jonny, Ed and Thom lead three-guitar attack kick-start Airbag, I unwittingly close my eyes in delight. The verse begins and when Thom starts singing he genuinely sounds like either he has just been awoken or risen from the dead. With Thom and me, it could easily be a bit of both. I wait for the second chorus, or, more precisely, the bridge – here it comes – a triple apocalyptic guitar solo, chords in raindrops gently tap on my cerebral cortex, caressing a worried mind begging for another hour of sleep. As I open my eyes, I find them adjusted to the sun, smiling at me and every human being through the cracks in the buildings. The bus is slowly filling up with people, some of them, spick and span white shirt “I’ve just had my coffee” watching me with palpable disdain. I smile beneath my hood as we head downtown and preppy porshes start rushing by the window.


In a fast German car
I’m amazed that I survived
An airbag saved my life





Wednesday, 10 March 2004, 08.31 am


Ambition makes you look pretty ugly
Kicking squeeling gucci little piggy


Five minutes is all I need to change clothes and fix my tie. Don’t forget to put on your smile. Familiar face in the mirror smiles back. Ready for work? Absolutely, pal. Now I just gotta get myself some coffee.


Another five minutes and I’m behind my desk, a hot coffee on my right, speckles of reflected light greet me from the monitor. I switch on my Microsoft powered miracle. Morning Bill. Paranoid android is the song to start today with. Written with all of us yuppies in mind by a bunch of British youngsters who were bloody lucky to make a living playing guitars, the song has not once been compared to Queen’s masterpiece “Bohemian Rhapsody”. That’s because halfway through, after the boys’ (and I suppose it’s Jonny Greenwood taking the lead) brilliant solo, it suddenly changes the pace… hell, it changes everything and becomes a totally different song. Never mind Pete’s Genesis had seven songs in one (Supper’s Ready), if Freddie’s gorgeous vocal is your shtick, go for it. Either way they didn’t do this too often in the 90s. So anyway, I digress, the second half. A strange choir kicks in, like this was some sort of a funeral. It could be, in a way. Meanwhile Thom’s stingy lyrics describe what we are behind these suits – young corporate workers, whose lives center on monthly pay and a nice stereo system. Spineless and hoping these dollars never run short. And when they do?


That’s it sir
You’re leaving
The cracking
Of pig skin
The dust and
The screaming
The yuppies networking
The panic
The vomit
The panic
The vomit

God loves his children
God loves his children… yeah





Wednesday, 10 March 2004, 10.38 am


And up above aliens hover
Making home movies
For the folks back home


First cigarette of the day. I stand on a fire-escape of the 11 story corporate building owned by a retail company where these nifty reviews come from. The narrow side street down below flows into one of the city veins on the left, cars rush by, horns echo climbing up the stone walls, creating a melody for my ears. A couple of colleagues next to me start discussing last night's events and how good certain girls get. I want to participate in the conversation and just then realize there's nothing I can tell them. I'm sure there's more to our world than this, but surely saying it out loud would be ridiculous. A verse from Subterannean homesick alien springs to mind, with those wonderfully ringing guitars and spacey synthesizers slowly forcing out the tired dialogue on my left. The third song off Radiohead’s OK Computer is all about dreamers and believers, and it sure sounds like a dream. Perhaps the most melodic and beautiful thing this band has written… I look up at the sky.


I’d tell all my friends but they’d never believe me
They’d think that I’d finally lost it completely
I’d show them the stars and the meaning of life

…They’d shut me away

But I’d be all right





Wednesday, 10 March 2004, 11.16 am


Breathe
Keep breathing
Don’t lose
Your nerve
Breathe
Keep breathing
I can’t do this
Alone


She storms through our office again. Again dropping a couple of papers, this girl always is such a pretty mess. Picks them from the ground, smiles like nothing has happened and disappears behind the manager's door. I don't even know her name or if she has a boyfriend. Or if this boyfriend isn't by chance my manager. The problem is she obviously doesn't work on our floor. But each time I take that elevator, I wish she came in. One of these days I gonna ask her to dinner with me. Hey, an honest «no» is better than this… Set to an impersonal background of indifferent noise Exit music (for a film) is yuppie romance, a song about Romeo and Juliet as Thom Yorke himself admits. It may sound gloomy, but this story is with a happy ending. They shag.


And you can laugh
A spineless laugh
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you

Now we are one
In everlasting peace

We hope that you choke
That you choke





Wednesday, 10 March 2004, 01.01 pm


Shell smashed
Juices flowing, wings twitch
Legs are going, don’t get
Sentimental it always
Ends up drivel


Lunch time. Gladly I descend from the retail industry heaven to join the busy crowds rushing through the square in every possible direction – McDonalds, Burger King, cheap and not so cheap restaurants. I decide to go for a pizza. A lovely view opens from the window, as I take a seat and wait for the fragrant cheese-and-pineapple to get cold, meanwhile sipping on my Sprite. Gentle sunny riffs of Let down suggest a perfect soundtrack for today’s wonderful lunch break – people all around, speaking at least three languages, the world’s on fire… I’m just not buying this is the life I want for myself. Neither do Radiohead, as they see disappointment behind all this joyful mess, and sing about flying away. But where?


One day
I am gonna grow wings





Wednesday, 10 March 2004, 03.42 pm


Karma police, arrest this boy
He talks in math


I don’t know if I really believe in Karma. Maybe. Karma police is a slow paced repetitive pop song about things that come back to you. Well, these afternoons sure do. The song’s best moment is almost the ending, when Thom starts singing for a minute there I lost myself, I lost myseeelf… irresistible. It closes with a massive distortion, slowly fading until stopped by a sweet piano chord. Suddenly my computer starts talking.


Comfortable, not drinking too much
Regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week)
Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries
At ease


That's me. Fitter happier has to be the album’s centerpiece. A mechanized voice reads out what I should be, what I have become. On Sundays ring road supermarket - yeah, that’s also me. Nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate - oh, I guess so. Still kisses with saliva - hmm, never thought of it this way.


Calm, fitter, healthier and more productive
A pig
In a cage
On antibiotics





Wednesday, 10 March 2004, 05.12 pm


Received a message from my friends. Beer tonight? Yeah, why not. I change clothes at the boys' room and storm out of the building at 05.31. Some rock n' roll is what I need right now. Evening sun hides behind the stone walls. As my bus comes, the opening chords of Electioneering start perhaps the most straightforward rock piece of the album. Which reminds me, OK Computer is a concept album. Of course, Thom and Co had to follow the oppressing Fitter happier with some sort of a solution. Let loose is their solution, and indeed, what else can we do in the end of another hard-earned day?





Wednesday, 10 March 2004, 10.46 pm


When you go out drinking with someone, there are two options. Either you get drunk to the extent of not remembering next morning what you did last night, or you enjoy the marvelous opportunity of watching them get drunk to the above extent… and then naturally you are the one to drive everyone home. Well, I'm a beer drinker and four beers are usually not enough for me to get that drunk, but I'm thankful I don't have a license yet. So anyway, tonight I'm just this guy in the corner, trying to drown something that tells him he should be somewhere else, smoking a lot of cigarettes, and sometimes throwing in a joke that everybody for some reason to me unexplainable finds funny. But they're already too drunk anyway. Cigar? Yeah, bring it in.


Climbing up the walls is a song about finding oneself unable to escape the thoughts in your head. Screeching guitars, distorted wails, a slow pace make this a torture of a song, a perfect nightmare. And each time you look inside, you find it there. Something you so want to forget. You.


Either way you turn
I'll be there
Open up your skull
I'll be there
Climbing up the walls





Thursday, 11 March 2004, 01.52 am


They dropped me at my driveway. I take off the glasses and watch the blurred tale lights disappear. Then turn to my house. So old and pretty, and not a single light is on. On the third try I manage to insert the key in the lock. Katy greets me in the hall, as I kneel to stroke her. This is my home. My little perfect world. Rather unexpectedly, the album too paints a perfect world like this, in No surprises, a sweet little track with bells, and a total pleasure, especially when compared to the previous song.


Such a pretty house
Such a pretty garden
No alarms and no surprises please





Thursday, 11 March 2004, 07.46 am


Trying hard to open my eyes, I board the bus. I should ask that girl to dinner with me tonight. Passing my hand over my chin discovers I forgot to shave my face. Cr*p… Whatever. I should also finish that OK computer review today. Lucky is perhaps my least favorite song on the album, I didn't have much to say about it last time around, and I still don't today. Some songs are just songs, and this definitely isn't a bad one.





Thursday, 11 March 2004, 08.31 am


Sometimes I get over charged
That’s when you see sparks
They ask where the hell I’m going
At 1000 feet per second


Fix my tie, put on the smile. Someone told me once I remind George Michael when I have stubble. That must be good. Either way, it’s a brand new day and now I’m thinking – how in the world am I going to finish that review? Well, I’ll probably say something like “OK Computer is a concept album, dedicated to the 90s generation of bright minds and corporate employees. It is a stingy, witty, clever record, which has and probably is prone to keep finding new open-minded listeners, who will definitely see themselves and people around them in it. It deserves every bit of praise it has received over the years, and then some. The music is gorgeous, the guitars (so far for the last time) sound amazing, and even if this record doesn’t capture Radiohead as the rock heroes they were on The Bends, it still makes them so much more than that, because…”


The closing track Tourist still plays in my head, as I think of these and other words to close my review with. Meanwhile I take the elevator. The most beautiful thing about Tourist, a gorgeous ballad per se, are the closing 30 or so seconds, when the music slowly fades until there’s only the beat left, finally it also stops, bringing the song to a halt, and us to an elevator signal. The journey is over. What’s your journey? Mine ends here, on my floor, 8.39 am.


Oh wait, it’s not my floor. I work on the tenth, this is the 7th. The doors open and I see the cutest smile in the world, as she walks in. “Going up, right?” “Yep.” She presses 10. I take a deep breath.


“Hey, um.. so we’re going to the same floor?”







PS: This review was inspired by Andym173’s wonderful Pablo Honey Radiohead review. We’ll keep an eye on the fellow in the next couple of weeks, as he takes up the uneasy task of reviewing every LP and even some EP’s of his favorite band. Hope you liked this review, Andy (sorry if it took somewhat too long). And… thanks everyone for reading!


…over to you, man.