FEATURE:
Immerse Your Soul in Love
Radiohead’s The Bends at Twenty-Five
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EVERY time an important album…
nears an anniversary, it provides me an opportunity to do a bit of research and discover more about it. Radiohead’s second album, The Bends, is twenty-five on 13th March, and it is a record that so many people hold dear. I love Radiohead to death, and The Bends is my favourite album of theirs – I would place it in my top-five albums ever. I am not sure whether any other artist has made such a leap between their debut and sophomore albums, but Radiohead’s progress was startling! I have probably mentioned this in other features regarding The Bends, but few who listened to their debut, Pablo Honey, in 1993 would have predicated an album like The Bends to come so soon – if at all, for that matter! It must have been tense in the Radiohead camp in 1993. Pablo Honey is a solid (if unspectacular) record, which most people remember for the single, Creep. By the time the band began touring the U.S. early in 1993, Creep was a massive hit and there was this pressure to follow it. It is strange to think that, at one point, Radiohead were considered a one-hit wonder. Radiohead cancelled an appearance at the Reading Festival, as Thom Yorke was exhausted, both physically and mentally. Maybe the story is untrue, but EMI wanted the band to get sorted and sort of get their act together within six months, or else they’d be dropped.
That expectation to keep touring and produce more music must have been intense for the band, but I imagine Yorke, as Radiohead’s lead, struggled the most. Radiohead did set to work following up Pablo Honey. They were pleased to work with producer John Leckie and engineer Nigel Godrich (who would become their producer after The Bends - and he is to this day), but EMI were keen for them to have an album out by October 1994. A lead single was needed, and the band had a choice between The Bends, Just, Sulk, and (Nice Dream). Early on in the recording process, there was this tension and sense of split. The band could not discuss which single to release first, and John Leckie faced challenges with guitarist Jonny Greenwood – Greenwood was experimenting with new sounds (on rented guitars); Leckie felt Greenwood’s sound was already good and did not need to change. Early in 1994, there was slow progress, and songs were coming together gradually. By April, there was a bit of tension between Yorke and the band as to whether they should take a break. Leckie told Yorke to go and record some songs by himself. The group were scheduled to go on tour from May until mid-June, and they resumed recording in the middle of June. Recording at The Manor, Oxfordshire, there was definitely improvement and a more relaxed band. Despite some strains and false starts, The Bend was released on 13th March, 1995. The Bends is a more expansive, experimental, and interesting album than the Grunge-inspired Pablo Honey. The guitars are more interesting and varied; the lyrics mix the cryptic with personal, and there are more sounds thrown into the pot.
Whilst the album did reach number-four on the U.K. chart, there were some mixed reviews when The Bends arrived. It seems extraordinary to think about it now, but the fact The Bends was snubbed by some is outrageous. 1995 was the height of Britpop, and Radiohead did not really fit in with other bands like Blur and Oasis. Shortly before The Bends was released, Oasis and Blur were embroiled in a famous chart battle – Blur’s Country House pipped Oasis’ Roll with It to the top spot. The Bends received the praise it deserved in retrospective reviews. That said, Radiohead were credited with widening the British music scene and creating some diversity in a time dominated by Britpop. The Bends did take Radiohead from potential one-hit wonders to a band on the rise. I do wonder what those critics were listening to when they were a bit tepid regarding The Bends. Those who did praise the album in 1995 knew Radiohead were a properly big band who were releasing stadium-sized gems. Since The Bends, Radiohead have evolved their sound and seem to reinvent themselves on every album. Whilst many people say The Bends’ follow-up, OK Computer (1997) is their finest moment, I think The Bends is the best album they produced. This is AllMusic’s assessment:
“Pablo Honey in no way was adequate preparation for its epic, sprawling follow-up, The Bends. Building from the sweeping, three-guitar attack that punctuated the best moments of Pablo Honey, Radiohead create a grand and forceful sound that nevertheless resonates with anguish and despair -- it's cerebral anthemic rock. Occasionally, the album displays its influences, whether it's U2, Pink Floyd, R.E.M., or the Pixies, but Radiohead turn clichés inside out, making each song sound bracingly fresh. Thom Yorke's tortured lyrics give the album a melancholy undercurrent, as does the surging, textured music. But what makes The Bends so remarkable is that it marries such ambitious, and often challenging, instrumental soundscapes to songs that are at their cores hauntingly melodic and accessible. It makes the record compelling upon first listen, but it reveals new details with each listen, and soon it becomes apparent that with The Bends, Radiohead have reinvented anthemic rock”.
When they reviewed The Bends in 2008, the BBC had some really interesting points to make about an album that was not only a big change in terms of Radiohead’s output, but a hugely important album for the British music world in 1995:
“Thom Yorke and his band of merry men have taken the musical landscape and toyed, spliced and even at times mollycoddled it. Where most bands pick a path and stick to it, the Oxford five-piece have danced over and beyond various musical landscapes, carving out a unique hollow for others to marvel at. But before they achieved such a status, Radiohead had some establishing to do.
At a time when the main argument in the music industry was Blur vs. Oasis, Radiohead were following up their debut Pablo Honey with a more progressive move towards the largely unpopular art rock movement. The Bends sounded different. Why? It had subtle creativity at its core. Producer John Leckie, who also produced Pink Floyd, gave the band an unprecedented freedom of expression and the band had more than enough ability to take the ball and run...
The first track Planet Telex feels genuinely refreshing even thirteen years later. Further on, High and Dry and Fake Plastic Trees are simply acoustic treats – stirring and poignant. Bones swiftly picks up the mood before Just blows most of the previous tracks out of the water, with the gain whacked up to ten and '90s guitar solos aplenty. Street Spirit (Fade Out), although notoriously downbeat contains one of the most recognizable guitar riffs in musical history. Accompany that with haunting harmonies and a string section and it all amounts to a stunning finish to the album.
Popular opinion places OK Computer as Radiohead's finest release to date, yet the The Bends was where they really put themselves firmly into the public consciousness. On the title track, Yorke sings, ''where do we go from here?'' like he didn’t have a plan…Luckily for us, he had a pretty good one.
From its first defiant line, “Where do we go from here?”, Radiohead’s landmark releaseThe Bends is a polished bottling of the quintet’s napalm, teething through post-rock classicism and bursting with a tortured falsetto from our beloved Thom Yorke. It combines the darkest tones of rock with a haunting dread that makes it marginally okay to digest it all — even if every song sees no resolution amid the harshness of reality. It feels honest. We’re all aware that making music is no easy feat. Since The Bends has always felt like the product of both ideas and effort, the fact that it sounds like it took neither idea nor effort is an upshot of talent. This is a raw ritual, a visionary blend of brooding texture, tension, spirit, and synth”.
As I said earlier, it is staggering to see how Radiohead went from being defined by Creep to releasing an album that is considered one of the best from the ‘90s. I do not think there are any anniversary releases planned to mark The Bends’ twenty-fifth anniversary – I think the band are working on something to celebrate Kid A’s twentieth later in the year -, but I would encourage people to go and seek it out. You can buy it on vinyl, or just go and stream the album.
It is a wonderful album that still sounds unrivalled nearly twenty-five years after it was brought into the world. Five years ago, many people reviewed and reassessed The Bends. I came across an article from Consequence in Sound that is fascinating to read:
“So what do Radiohead’s undisputed craftsmanship and self-projection add up to here? After all, the one great theme of this work is that it’s thrilling because it’s just so unassuming. An acoustic-sounding guitar, bass, drums, and striking synth harmonically open up lyricism that creates new possibilities for improv. At the time, no one would have dreamed there was anything lyrical or lean coming from a band who two years prior wrote a song called “Anyone Can Play Guitar”. Yorke’s best lines sound less like they’ve been written with force and more like they’ve just seeped from a conversation or personal thought. “You can force it, but it will not come/ You can taste it, but it will not form,” he murmurs on “Planet Telex”. And later, “Everything is broken/ Everyone is broken” finds him flippant without apology, cerebral without warning. “All your insides fall to pieces,” goes the line from “High and Dry”; returning seconds later with a hurt soaked in passive bitterness, he sings: “You will be the one screaming out.”
With a gentleness whose comforts only a corpse could resist, the cracked cadence of the word “be” during the beautiful “Fake Plastic Trees” plea of “if I could be who you wanted” knocks you off your feet fast enough to swivel you around and catch you again. Of course, the riling guitar-howler “Just” and the barrage of Jonny Greenwood’s strings on “My Iron Lung” tear through bass lines so fast that it purges the air right out of your lungs, but it’s perhaps Pablo Honey’s poppier colorations, marking songs like “Sulk”, that allow Yorke and crew to slather thick coats of dread onto “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”.
You can love this record, because it’s brave, because it’s needed. So “where do we go from here?” Radiohead leaves us with the last line on the album to answer that question: “Immerse your soul in love”.
There is barely a wasted or weak moment anywhere on The Bends (that being said though, I have never been a fan of the opening number, Planet Telex). From the intense and captivating songs like The Bends, Just, and My Iron Lung, to the more emotional High and Dry, Fake Plastic Trees, and Bullet Proof… I Wish I Was, The Bends is such a rounded and accomplished album. The track programming is perfect, so the first half has The Bends, High and Dry, and Fake Plastic Trees; the second half contains Just, My Iron Lung, and Street Spirit (Fade Out). Thom Yorke (lead vocals, guitars, piano and string arrangements), Jonny Greenwood – (guitar, organ, recorder, synthesizer, piano and string arrangements), Ed O'Brien (guitar and backing vocals) Colin Greenwood (bass) and Phil Selway (drums) are sublime throughout, and I especially love Thom Yorke’s huge vocal range and lyrical dexterity. I am sure you can find some rarities from The Bends at the Radiohead library, and it is clear the album influenced a host of British bands. Maybe it was Thom Yorke’s angsty falsetto that seemed like a real change against singers like Liam Gallagher (Oasis). Before The Bends, there were not a massive amount of popular bands whose singer was projecting this falsetto sound – it is hard to imagine Coldplay were it not for The Bends. Quite a few of Radiohead’s albums appear in the lists of the best albums ever – including OK Computer and Kid A -, but it is clear The Bends most certainly deserves every accolade it gets! Maybe there was some tension and struggle at the start, but Radiohead produced a simply stunning album in 1995. The album’s swansong highlight, Street Spirit (Fade Out), ends with the line “Immerse your soul in love”. That seems like a perfect way…
TO end one of the best albums ever..