Radiohead - The Bends

General Information

Original Author: JVM

Artist: Radiohead

Album: The Bends

Genre: Rock/Alternative Rock

Label: Parlophone (UK), Capitol (US)

Length: 48:38

Track Listing

1. Planet Telex – 4:19
2. The Bends– 4:04
3. High and Dry – 4:20
4. Fake Plastic Trees – 4:51
5. Bones – 3:08
6. (Nice Dream) – 3:54
7. Just – 3:54
8. My Iron Lung – 4:37
9. Bullet Proof..I Wish I Was – 3:29
10. Black Star – 4:07
11. Sulk – 3:43
12. Street Spirit (Fade Out) – 4:12

Radiohead's second album is, simply put, a masterpiece of music. While their first album had plenty of good, in your face rock, and was quite guitar heavy, this sophomore album retains much of that but also hints of Radiohead's more electronic, spacey future, especially in songs like Planet Telex and Street Spirit.

Sound

10/10. The album begins, on Planet Telex, with a spacey kind of sound that Radiohead would later be well known for on their next few albums. However, Telex has a good dose of rock thrown in, and it only gets better throughout the album. Whether they're riffing with all three guitarists or doing a slow melodic thing, the album does not have a single dull point in the sound department. Every sound recorded on this album was either put there for a good reason, or else unintentional and left in because it sounds good. The point is, the whole album sounds wonderful.

Vox

10/10 Thom Yorke will probably never top what he did on songs like High and Dry and Bulletproof. He's made it pretty clear that Jeff Buckley was his main inspiration in the vocal department, and damn does it show. His voice is exactly fitting to the songs throughout the album, whether beautiful and melodic, brash and up front, or monotonous like on Street Spirit. He's done a lot of amazing stuff on Radiohead's later albums I think, but this tops it for me.

Overall

10/10. This is a truly great album. I think it's definitely the best introduction to Radiohead out there. Every song is perfectly done, and each is great in its own way. That's really something to say when this album contains some of Radiohead's best work, the whole album is full of it.

Easily one of the best albums of the 90's, and I would say the only other Radiohead album this good is OK Computer (even though their other works are great as well).

This is the sound of a band thats doing exactly what they want to do, and they sure know how to do it.