"OK Computer": Classic Or Dud?

that's a horrible way of disagreeing with what he said (which I also do)

I love Radiohead and don't mean to endorse the above complaints. But I can see where the self-important claim comes from. Lots of big alt-y bands in the 90s (e.g. REM, Pearl Jam, Nirvana) complained about being famous, and also complained about social and political ills. So the complaints end up getting conflated (I'd say by unsympathetic listeners/critics), but the bands don't help when they make documentaries like Meeting People Is Easy, and interviewing like "this record almost destroyed the band/my sanity". The reason I mention the 90s is because this kind of attitude was common then but isn't now; but Radiohead is one of the few bands to be huge during the whole span.

I'd enjoy their (2000s) music more if it was constructed and delivered less for a mainstream radio / tv / internet audience.

-- Scik Mouthy

I wouldn't rope in the bands external behaviour (by which I mean interviews unless they very specifically referred to the music) because it's a bit of a strawman argument so I hope nobody thinks that's what I'm basing what I'm saying on (although I admit to being possibly subconciously influenced by this)

wrt condenderizer

I think, of all bands, I always feel like Radiohead are a very self conscious band.

They feel like their sound is very much an idea of what a modern rock band should sound like. The whole thing is just so servicable to me. They don't feel like a band that are going to surprise you in any way.

someone please elaborate on this because I don't understand what you mean by this at all.

The statement you made ("they were doing what they think great bands should do") is almost word-for-word what critics said about Kid A when it came out ("this is what great bands do; follow up their most ambitious album to date with something that is a stylistic detour and also a total masterpiece omg spooge"). You are taking the hype that enveloped the album after it came out and attributing it back to the band.

They don't feel like a band that are going to surprise you in any way.

wau you are young

I'd say In Rainbows is the first album they've released since Pablo Honey that I found unsurprising.

Might just be me but I kinda find it hard to believe they all sat down together one day and said, "Let's gear our music predominantly towards a mainstream stadium audience."

-- Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 19 August 2008 13:52 (2 hours ago) Link

It's not as cut-and-dried as a "let's go stadium rock" band meeting. It's subtler. Once a band does a stadium tour, there's a tendency to consider that venue while writing their new songs.

except I don't think Kid A is stylistically that different from Ok Computer

In fact I'd agree with you on the hype around Kid A being entirely critiic constructed, because I really don't think the music bears it out. It is just a be bleepy compared to the other one.

Once a band does a stadium tour, there's a tendency to consider that venue while writing their new songs.

Which leads to roffles when the next album bombs and they're back to playing smaller places. (As I've seen happen plenty of times.)

Thinking on Depeche again, I remember one time Dave Gahan talking about how he would use a rehearsal studio set up to simulate a massively packed stadium or arena -- thousands of cheering voices, etc. -- so he could figure out how best to sing songs in that kind of environment, and how the folks at the studio who didn't know who he was thought he was kinda insane. I thought that too when I first heard the story, then I thought, "Well, wait, that's actually a GOOD idea if you're where you're at." And Depeche have regularly played that level since 1988/1990, so there you go.

They feel like their sound is very much an idea of what a modern rock band should sound like. The whole thing is just so servicable to me. They don't feel like a band that are going to surprise you in any way.

-- I know, right?

Yes it is. That is the critical and fan reaction to Kid A parrotted back almost to a T.

-- HI DERE

Also, for comparison's sake, what bands are likely to surprise you?

FWIW, critical and fan reactions aren't necessarily wrong, and one can share them without parroting them.

This is true, but when you enter an argument by saying "I came to them after the fact and I never saw them as blah blah blah; they just seem like they're trying to be <whatever everyone who was there initially said about them>" it is going to be very difficult to shake the impression that your opinion has been formed by the environment surrounding the band.

Or, as James Murphy would say, "I WAS THERE"

I think that this is a bit of a cul de sac anyway because it's not like I'm sitting around waiting for all music to surprise me.

xp, I've said that this is a contributor several times

Also, for comparison's sake, what bands are likely to surprise you?

I don't know if answering this is such a good idea

It'll destabilize the conversation, but maybe that's what's required.

No it just becomes some lame way of showing how my taste is so shit so what do I know, which I know is not why you're asking, but that's what this shit turns into.

^^surprisingly defensive

this album has some joints. i liked 'let down' a lot. airbag. never got why ppl hated 'electioneering'. i never 'got' paranoid android. too proggy or something.

obv the praise for a pretty MOR rock album is out of hand.

Been coming home since my last post, so many man XXXXXs - Ned, i don't mean the music, the melodies, the lyrics, the arrangements (well, maybe the lyrics, a little); I mean the sonic presentation, the recording, the mixing, the mastering. I don't like the way Radiohead's records SOUND on a physical level; I think it's a very targeted, stadium-audience sound.

^^this is partially why I like Exit Music so much, I think it's genuinely interesting sounding.

Like, lots of the 00s Radiohead music IS radical and weird and shocking BUT it comes at you in a way that feels, physically, like Coldplay, like Stereophonics, like whoever - "Morning Bell (Amnesiac)" for instance is a lovely tune but it just fucking sounds HORRIBLE, his vocals are nasty and corrupted and spread too thin like butter on too much bread.

Well, the Kid A version of "Morning Bell" is way way way better.

Yes, it is, but it's still more like Coldplay than it is like Scott Walker or Robert Wyatt.

See, I couldn't possibly care less about Scott Walker, Robert Wyatt or Coldplay.

(I also can't think of any Coldplay tunes that are in 5/4 or actually feature a decent rhythm section.)

the way the field recordings comes out of the acoustic guitar is really nice, and the choir bits just don't fit in a really good way, also the vocal performance is really subtle and I like how elements get grouped together, such as how the guitar swells under his voice towards the end.

Yes, it is, but it's still more like Coldplay than it is like Scott Walker or Robert Wyatt.

more like a band than a solo artist, you might say

If we're going to talk specifically about the way their music sounds, I think "Idioteque" is probably my favorite thing of theirs by a huge margin; those harsh metallic gated drum machine noises paired with those warm-sounding sine wave synths mixed in with Thom's escalating-in-intensity vocal performance... just fantastic.

Which is entirely fair enough. I'm not that bothered about any of them particularly, but Scott Walker's last two records, sonically, in terms of the phenomenology of listening to them, are absolutely fucking extraordinary and outlandish and weird and freaky and confusing; whereas Radiohead's are not, to me, but could be if they sounded different. It's the difference between how New Grass sounds and how Reckoner sounds; Reckoner definitely, defiantly comes from the same stalk as New Grass, but its beefed up, polished, EQ'd and made palatable for a big, half-listening audience, in the car or on the radio or via the iPod; it's made to sound like a record, like any common or garden major-label big modern rock record, rather than a piece of music, and that really negatively effects it for me.

XXXPOST - it's NOT ABOUT 5/4 time or a decent rhythm section!

I'm not talking about band vs solo artist, maybe it was wrong of me to choose them. I don't feel as if anyone is understanding what I'm saying.

I feel your pain

XXXPOST - it's NOT ABOUT 5/4 time or a decent rhythm section!

Yes it is! That is about 70% of what makes "Morning Bell" exciting to listen to, the rest being the way the vocal line lies over more super-warm synth sounds. The main reason I think Coldplay sucks ass is because I don't think they can mix their drums or bass for shit; half of their songs would actually be fun to listen to if they had some type of foundation that didn't make them feel like plodding trials. Radiohead had this problem a lot on Pablo Honey but figured out what they were doing on The Bends and never looked back.

I think he means, that's not what he's objecting to.

I think I mean "this is the biggest distinguishing factor I see between Radiohead and Coldplay".

obv the praise for a pretty MOR rock album is out of hand.

^^^^^ I agree with this.

So do I

"I'll take the quiet life/ A handshake of carbon monoxide"

I think this is a really good example of a Radiohead lyric in that it is really really good and really beautiful and so abstract and yet really so abstract, like what does it actually mean? This is how I feel a lot of the time about Radiohead in general, I can see why they're supposed to be good, but it feels so remote.

Also, complaining that Radiohead are boring because they sound like all the bands that have tried to sound like Radiohead seems like a terribly unfair critique. (That re: Colplay and the modern rock sound.)

What happens if I suggest that the recent Scott Walker records might owe something to Radiohead? <ducks>

I think I lie closer to Dan than Nick on this issue.

i dont have a problem with MOR records at all. "Some of my best friends are MOR." But a lot of the talk around this record, whatever Mel W wants to pretend, is about how forward thinking and exceptional and sui generis it is, which imo is pretty bullshit

xxp, I thought this when Drift came out

I don't subscribe to deej's viewpoint at all.

Although I'd like to make it plain that I believe these guys NEVER stopped catering for a popular rock audience, and didn't perhaps do anything that elevated them to the position of revelatory sonic pioneers. They're great songwriters above everything else.

I'm not talking about things that distinguish Radiohead from Coldplay; I'm talking about things that make them sound similar.

Scott Walker, when asked around the time of The Drift, if he liked Radiohead, said "they're alright, but they use too much compression on their records, they sound like everyone else".

re: music being "remote": this is not an insult imo

I really can't get as worked up about that as you

xp