Radiohead - The Bends

This newsletter is about self-growth through music. In that spirit, I’m starting off this week’s post with an exercise in self-growth. I don’t know how many times I’ve mentioned this (probably a lot), but I have… issues listening to Radiohead. There are many explanations for this, most of them related to personal preferences or connotations from my life that have nothing to do with the band’s music. Here’s hoping that listening through their discography chronologically will give me the perspective that seems to drive so many people to love their music.

Normally, my face looks pretty much like the dude on the front of this album while I’m listening to Radiohead. He looks like he’s totally over it, swimming in a sea of confusion and perplexed annoyance, unable to understand or summon the will to want to understand what he’s hearing, unsure if it’s even worth it to try. The internet has told him a billion billion times how amazing Radiohead is, how even their early albums are all-time greats, how they practically invented the internet or whatever the hell happened to make them megafamous (that’s a deep dive for another year).

And yet, in the spirit of being a good and open music listener, I’ve included Radiohead once again in a list of best albums. I know many think of the band that way. So as a way of growing musically and personally, I will be searching for and identifying greatness while listening to this album. If there is a fair way to approach music one might or might not dislike, I feel like that’s it in a nutshell. 

After a deep re-listen, I think this is my favorite Radiohead album, and that kind of makes me sad. It’s an intriguing promise of another great alt rock band that never really gets delivered, only deviated from - that’s the reason OK Computer and Kid A are so lauded, is it not? Because they deviated from this album’s sound so far? Radiohead took a promising, developing sound and threw it aside in favor of meandering experimentation that I have yet to enjoy despite years of trying.

This is Radiohead when they still sounded original to me, more than a thinly veiled mouthpiece for their various influences. It’s a promise of a talented alt-rock band that never materialized because they decided to pivot instead, and despite the fact that nobody seems to agree with this sentiment, I still see that decision as a tragedy. This album drops the meaningless whinyness of Pablo Honey, adds a more nuanced songwriting style, and achieves a pretty cohesive sound that fits right into the alt rock/britpop landscape. Was it an intriguing decision to deviate from that? Sure, and I’d watch the movie about the band’s career. But - and this is subject to change, as I’m trying to learn to change my mind when compelled - that cool factoid doesn’t have a bit of impact nowhere on the band’s future music, and therefore does nothing for me.

So while I enjoy The Bends on its own merits, it’s hard to actually listen to it for fun knowing that 1) the rest of the world thinks this is not the band’s ultimate form and 2) I dislike that ultimate form so strongly. The Radiohead story ending has been spoiled for me, and it’s hard to pretend I don’t know how the movie ends.

From the roundup Jamwise #48 - Best Albums of 1995.