This month marks thirty years since the release of Radiohead’s sophomore album, and first masterpiece, The Bends. Threatened with relegation to status as one-hit wonders, the Oxfordshire quintet answered the success of Pablo Honey with an album even more infectious and confident than the last, a collection of songs which took the band’s inherent contradictions in stride. In twelve tracks and fifty-eight minutes, The Bends travels the spectrum from oppositional to vulnerable, from artistic to commercial, from alienated to universal and back again—frequently in the same blow.
Category: Radiohead
Radiohead :: Jonny, Thom & a CR78
Tarzana, California, August 2016. Several months after the release of A Moon Shaped Pool, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood went minimal with a Roland CR-78 drum machine in the hills of the San Fernando Valley. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the field recording finds the pair stripping things back as day turns to night, working up renditions of Pool’s “The Numbers” and “Present Tense.” All vibe. Campfire glow aplenty.
Transmissions :: Philip Selway (Radiohead)
Philip Selway, best known as the drummer in Radiohead joins us on Transmissions to discuss his third album, Strange Dance. It’s a sweeping and textural listen, envisioned by its creator as something like a “Carole King record meets Daphne Oram.” We caught up with Phil to dig in. Along the way, we discuss his songwriting approach, explore why he decided to forgo playing drums on this new outing, touch on the side project arrangements enjoyed by Radiohead, the band’s relationship to peers like Portishead, Wilco, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the 20th anniversary of Hail to the Thief, and much more.
Radiohead :: Kid A Mnesia
The retrospective box set Kid A Mnesia released last month reunites the two albums recorded during these sessions, Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), along with a cassette of B-sides and a disc of alternates and outtakes. For the faithful, it’s a long-awaited valediction of the band’s most creative and far-reaching period. For the uninitiated, it also offers a perfect place to start. After October 2000, the band was never the same again. Kid A Mnesia is the sound of the band we talk about when we talk about Radiohead being born.
Phosphorescent :: House of Cards
One of our favorite releases of 2018 , on C’est La Vie Matthew Houck returned to the path he set out 18 years ago as Phosphorescent. In the five years that lapsed between his previous record , Houck […]
Radiohead :: From The Basement (2011)
As the first 10 years of the new millennium crept to a close, we embarked on a series called Decade. By no means a comprehensive list, our aim was to highlight works within the zeitgeist that had left an impact. (The original master list was near quadruple in length but alas, we ran out of time.) The series concluded the morning of New Year’s Eve 2009 with what we deemed our favorite album of the decade: Radiohead’s Kid A, released October 2, 2000.
Decade :: Radiohead, Kid A (2000)
Radiohead’s Kid A is advanced. You know this because you’ve listened to it. You know this because countless writers and critics and friends and foes have told you so. Dozens, maybe hundreds, […]
I Might Be Wrong…
At the time of The Eraser’s release I was in the middle of two months of travel, and could not be bothered, so i just ignored it. And truthfully, based on the […]