Just getting into Radiohead for the first time...!

[Darth_Pazuzu]

I have a confession to make: I kind of missed the boat with Radiohead back in the '90s. I mean yeah, I was always familiar with Creep, because it was one of those songs the radio just played to death, but I was never all that inspired to check them out. That is, until recently! A couple months back, I picked up a copy of their recent 2-CD compilation The Best Of Radiohead and gave it a listen. It didn't really make that much of an impact on me the first time around, but I later came back to it, and after repeated listens their songs are seriously beginning to grow on me! :smile: (A lot of music's like that, y'know...)

As far as my favorite Radiohead songs, I must say that I really like the songs that come from 1995's The Bends a great deal. High And Dry and Fake Plastic Trees are especially gorgeous, and OK Computer's No Surprises is also a lovely gem. I'm not as keen on their more experimental work of the past decade, but I must say that I love How To Disappear Completely (from Kid A)! It's hauntingly, ethereally beautiful - and kind of unsettling and disturbing at the same time, much the same way a lot of Pink Floyd songs can sometimes be. (There's arguably even a certain thematic similarity with much of Floyd's '70s lyrics, in terms of being "here" and "not here" as well as the overall dystopian vibe. The Syd Barrett-era Floyd kind of feels like a touchstone as well...)

 

[ChickenPug!]

It took me a bit to get into them. I never liked their first record. But now they have become one of my favorite bands. I love The Bends, Kid A, and Hail to the thief, etc, but I have to say In Rainbows has become my favorite record by them. I listen to it while I run. I love every song on it. I run a path through the woods, it is usually vacant, and it's the perfect music for that.

I had pretty much given up on music or at least finding anything new I enjoy. Thank god for Radiohead, TV on the Radio and Arcade fire, they saved it for me.

Plus how could I not love Radiohead, they have a song call "Paranoid Android".

 

[Jono]

I got into Radiohead back in 1999 when I became slightly obsessed with Karma Police. Hail to the Thief is really the only album that I haven't really got into.

On a side note I also really enjoy Thom Yorke's CD, Eraser. Great stuff on his initial solo release.

 

[zakkrusz]

I haven't heard much of them but what I have heard gives me the impression they're not for me. Of course keep in mind I'm only basing my impressions off "Paranoid Android" and a few others. Glad you like them though.

 

[ChickenPug!]

I got into Radiohead back in 1999 when I became slightly obsessed with Karma Police. Hail to the Thief is really the only album that I haven't really got into.

On a side note I also really enjoy Thom Yorke's CD, Eraser. Great stuff on his initial solo release.

Forgot about that record. Heard nothing but good about it. Need to check it out.

 

[Yoda]

OK Computer is one of the best albums of all time.

I love The Bends too.

They lost me a bit with the later guitar-lite albums, but there are still a lot of great individual songs. I just can't listen to an entire album of that stuff.

They're a really good live band too.

 

[HappyDayRiot]

The only one I've never liked is Pablo Honey.

A quick glance at the tracks on that Best Of tell me that.. .wow, they put that together well. Some excellent songs on there - gotta agree How to Disappear Completely is one of the best though!

 

[backstept]

good music



enough has been said

 

[Geck]

They're one of my favourite bands too, and as someone else commented, excellent live. I saw them in Montreal last August and it was an outstanding show.

OK Computer is my favourite album of all time. That said, I don't love all their stuff...Amnesiac is a bit too weird in spots, and I was never able to get into Hail to the Thief either. I was glad for In Rainbows which is excellent again...and I love Yorke's solo stuff too.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

Kid A is one of my favorite rock albums of all time.

 

[Tyre]

I have a confession to make: I kind of missed the boat with Radiohead back in the '90s.

Heh. I actually didn't end up hearing "Creep" on the radio until 2003, but pretty soon I grew to love The Bends and (most of) OK Computer. I avoided Kid A for years until recently, and I was surprised by how much I liked it. There are a lot of people who love The Bends (their most accessible) and hate Kid A (their most experimental. Well, technically, Amnesiac is, but that's pretty much Kid A leftovers), or vice versa, while most people seem to love OK Computer. For their albums, I think:

Pablo Honey: **1/2
The Bends: *****
OK Computer: *****
Kid A: ****1/2
Amnesiac: ***1/2
Hail to the Thief: ****
In Rainbows: ****1/2

Pablo Honey has "Creep" and... uhh.... well, "Anyone can Play Guitar" and "Thinking About You" are pretty decent, but the rest of it isn't good. I think OK Computer is their best album, even if The Bends might still be my favorite. Kid A is great, with weird but fantastic songs like "The National Anthem" but pretty normal sounding ones such as "How to Disappear Completely" and "Optimistic". Amnesiac, despite having the great "Pyramid Song", "You and Whose Army", and "I Might Be Wrong" on it, overdoes the electronic experimentation. Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows try to strike compromises between Kid A and The Bends, with In Rainbows being more successful (it's my third favorite Radiohead album, actually).

My current top 10 songs:

1) Paranoid Android (from OK Computer)
2) Fake Plastic Trees (from The Bends)
3) No Surprises (from OK Computer)
4) How to Disappear Completely (And Never Be Found Again) (from Kid A)
5) Karma Police (from OK Computer)
6) All I Need (from In Rainbows)
7) There There (from Hail to the Thief)
8) Street Spirit (Fade Out) (from The Bends)
9) The National Anthem (from Kid A)
10) Videotape (from In Rainbows)

 

[Mooch]

according to my itunes I have 167 Radiohead songs. Yeah, I'm a fan.

 

[The Great Meech]

I liked Radiohead a ton when I was a teenager (I'm 21, so it's not that long ago), but I've largely stopped listening to them. I find most of the music simply too bleak. Most depressing songs seem to say "The world is bad, and this song is a plea for it to be better." Radiohead's music says "The world is bad." I decided when I was seventeen that, should I ever take my own life, it will be to the strains of No Surprises.

I've also never really understood why Kid A is so well regarded. I haven't listened to it for about four years now, but I remember thinking when I first heard it (or reading this opinion on a website and appropriating it, I can no longer remember which) that Kid A was good art but an, at best, lukewarm album.

This isn't to say that I don't think Radiohead is a great band--they are. Their music videos surpass anything else I've seen in that medium (okay, maybe not Weapon of Choice), they're musically inventive, they're intelligent, and, despite the core of rotten emotion I detect in many of their songs, I still find myself listening to the odd one (usually Jigsaw Falling Out of Place.)

Also, has anyone else heard the Easy Star All*Stars cover album Radiodread? You wouldn't think reggae versions of Radiohead's songs would work, but, alarmingly, they do. Their version of Electioneering is better than the original.

 

[The Habs Fan]

Kid A is one of my favorite rock albums of all time.

I feel the same way about Kid A.

My least favourite Radiohead albums are Pablo Honey and Hail to the Thief. In Rainbows was a return to greatness IMO.

 

[Darth_Pazuzu]

Recently, I told an admittedly silly Radiohead joke, starting up an entirely new thread in order to do it! Before updating this particular thread, I thought I'd mash everything together myself:

Well, now it appears that Radiohead's new disc will be a rock opera based on a famous novel by Isaac Asimov. Anyone care to venture a guess as to what the title is??

Foundation, I hope. If so, I'm sold.

Nope.

"Aye Aye, Robot"!
(I mean, just think about it for a moment...)

That's an incredibly poor joke.

But you did get it, I trust?

Yes, it took sometime to work my way through the layers of subtext, but I got there in the end.

Radiohead is one of the most overrated bands in the recent history of music, and I say that as someone who likes a lot of Radiohead. Radiohead, Coldplay, Oasis: the Triad of Overrated Pretentious English Rock.

Most of their recent stuff is simply depressing and annoying. OK Computer was about the last album I truly enjoyed start to finish, but even then the EMO was starting to creep in.

Yeah, I kind of get what you're talking about when it comes to their later electronica-inspired stuff, but even on their later discs you've got some great songs like "How To Disappear Completely," "Optimistic," "Knives Out," "There There" and "Go To Sleep."

(Is it just my twisted imagination, or does Go To Sleep have a bit of a Led Zeppelin vibe to anybody else?)

I totally agree as well, Pablo Honey was a great start, showed a lot of potential. The Bends is an absolutely awesome album, one of the best British albums of the 90s, and OK Computer marked the start of a downwards spiral into pretentiousness but still an excellent album.

I also agree that there are gems on the later albums, but really they are very ponderous pieces of work indeed on the whole. I never listen to any of them, although I own all of them.

Coldplay are more overrated than Radiohead

 

[Darth_Pazuzu]

Well, that's it for all the old BS!

Now, time for an update...

It appears that I have become 100% converted to Radiohead fandom now, because I've just recently picked up the 7-CD box set containing all six studio albums plus the live one! And I finally got their brand-new one, In Rainbows!

Sooooo...give or take a few B-sides from CD-singles or alternate acoustic renditions from soundtrack discs, I've pretty much got everything essential by Radiohead!

After listening to everything all the way through once, I must stand by my original statement: That my two favorite Radiohead discs are The Bends (1995) and OK Computer. Those two are pretty much the most consistent overall, and they include most of my favorite songs by the band: High And Dry, Fake Plastic Trees, Airbag, Karma Police, No Surprises, etc. The more recent discs are...a bit of an acquired taste, to be quite honest. As far as Kid A is concerned, I absolutely love How To Disappear Completely and rank that one among my favorites as well. Optimistic and Motion Picture Soundtrack are really good songs as well. But I actually prefer the live version of Everything In Its Right Place to the album version, and I have yet to completely internalize everything else on that album. Both Kid A and Amnesiac have a more experimental, electronic sort of bent to them, and while I respect the desire to branch out and experiment, the results are frankly a bit hit-and-miss for me. On Amnesiac, I really like the opening number, Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box, a great deal (although I've heard a live version from the Jools Holland show on Youtube which definitely rocks out a lot harder!), and Knives Out is a really cool and eerie pop song.

I also picked up the Best Of Radiohead DVD compilation of the band's videos, and they've made some pretty cool videos. I particularly like Fake Plastic Trees and its futuristic supermarket setting. Push Pulk/Like Spinning Plates is really weird and disturbing with its nightmarish interface of machinery and a pair of human infants, and it reminded me a great deal of that scene in The Matrix with the baby in the pod. I mean, it's not exactly like that, but it's the first thing that came to my mind. And not only that, you get both the UK and US versions of High And Dry, the latter of which has a kind of trendy Pulp Fiction feel to it, with shady criminal figures plotting and scheming in a roadside diner.

P.S. I have just now decided to adopt "I'm a reasonable man, get off my case!" as my new mantra!

 

[Mooch]

Sooooo...give or take a few B-sides from CD-singles or alternate acoustic renditions from soundtrack discs, I've pretty much got everything essential by Radiohead!

There's a lot more than a few!

In particular, I'd recommend the Airbag/How Am I Driving? and My Iron Lung EPs. You can get them on iTunes. Also "Fog" is a pretty great song (on the single for Knives Out)!

 

[stoneroses]

I like their first three albums. The Bends is the best of those for my ears.
The later stuff is a little pretentious for me but I like that they try to stay fresh and take chances.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Radiohead was one of those bands that I knew their main singles and listened to them occasionally. They were a band I liked, but wasn't a huge fan of. Last summer, I saw them live and that pretty much changed it so I became a much bigger fan. While certainly not the biggest fan, it inspired me to listen to more than OK Computer regularly.

 

[I am not Spock]

Love them. Kid A is probably one of my favourite albums ever.

I love 'How To Disappear Completely' as well, Pazazu!