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)!
Yeah, there's also an EP called
Com Lag...or at least I
think that's the title. Well, one of these days...
Anyway, if you want to know how I would rank all the Radiohead albums from most to least favorite, here's my preferred order:
1) The Bends (1995) - I think this is where the band really, seriously hit their stride as songwriters. While their first record,
Pablo Honey, bore the promise of greatness,
The Bends is where that promise is truly fulfilled. It's got the truly moving, magnificent
Fake Plastic Trees, the more laid-back yet still heartfelt
High And Dry, the full-on rocking of
My Iron Lung and the title track, the lilting balladry of
(Nice Dream) and of course the beautifully eerie closer
Street Spirit (Fade Out).
2) OK Computer (1997) - While
The Bends is their great rock/pop record, this is where Radiohead truly stakes a claim on brave new musical territory. It's got the head-twitchy, disturbed epic
Paranoid Android, the stately and thought-provokingly humorous
Karma Police, the unsettling computer-speech of
Fitter Happier, the effortlessly melodic and melancholy
No Surprises, as well as opener
Airbag and closer
The Tourist effectively serving as bookends of a sort!
3) Amnesiac (2001) - From the same experimental sessions which produced
Kid A, this is perhaps the more visceral and immediate of the two companion discs, totally all over the place stylistically but possessing sharp teeth nonetheless. Opening number
Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box is a vaguely menacing opener (which totally rocks out in an almost Joy Division/New Order manner in live performance),
Pyramid Song is a woozily dreamy piano ballad with strings, both
Pulk Pull/Revolving Doors and the partially backwards
Like Spinning Plates both set one's teeth on edge and raise the hairs on the back of the neck,
Knives Out is deceptively breezy guitar-pop with unsettling lyrics, the stately
You And Whose Army? is a wearily defiant protest song of sorts, and closer
Life In A Glasshouse has a kind of New Orleans jazz-band arrangement to it.
4) In Rainbows (2008) - Just released last year, this has a different feel to it than anything they've done before, but it's still quite recognizably Radiohead! My favorites include the odd-metered yet somehow still danceable opener
15 Step, which has got a really cool vocal melody from Thom Yorke, scorching yet light-on-its-feet rocker
Bodysnatchers, the eerie yet delicate
All I Need, breezily sad pop number
House Of Cards, the euphoric wonderment of
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, and then of course the stately and sad closing piano ballad
Videotape to top things off.
5) Pablo Honey (1993) - Basically a summation of the band's apprentice years as a junior-division post-punk/indie-style British guitar-pop outfit, this tends to get short shrift compared to the quantum leaps forward they would make on subsequent records. But it's still got quite a bit to recommend it, including of course their all-time anthem (for better or worse)
Creep, the lightly sardonic rock-and-roll-as-savior anthem
Anyone Can Play Guitar, the almost U2-ish
Stop Whispering, nervous rocker
Ripcord, and the teenage despondency of
Prove Yourself.
6) Kid A (2000) - A bit on the abstract side compared with its much rawer and more intimate companion
Amnesiac, just a tad more soundscape-oriented than song-oriented, it's still got one of my all-time favorites in
How To Disappear Completely, a gentle acoustic ballad with an unsettlingly dissonant string arrangement. My other two favorites here are
Optimistic and
Morning Bell.
7) Hail To The Thief (2003) - Certainly not a
bad record, but perhaps the least consistent overall. This record feels like...well...like just another Radiohead record - which is ironically the one thing you
can't say about all the
other Radiohead records! For the most part there's nothing here that really jumps out at me as being earth-shatteringly brilliant...with
two very big exceptions: the darkly moving pop-rocker
There There and the lilting, almost folky-Zep
Go To Sleep.
