The Bends

Let me get this out of the way first: “Fake Plastic Trees” is easily the worst song on this album. It’s also, as usual, the longest. Why this underwritten piece of whinery has been elevated to the level of all-time classic is astonishing to me. There’s better stuff all around it.

 

Now that that’s finished with: I like this album. I like it a pretty decent amount. It took a little while to grow on me, but that’s why I don’t review stuff after listening to it once. This certainly isn’t the five star masterpiece it’s passed off as – there are just too many mediocre songs for it to be that – but it’s a big leap forward from Pablo Honey.

 

I’ve already remarked on the worst song on the album, so let me talk about the best – “My Iron Lung” is certainly the first truly great song Radiohead ever wrote, and if everything they did were this good they might actually deserve their reputation. It almost veers a little too close to sounding like early 90s Adrian Belew – Yorke sounds uncannily like Belew channeling Lennon and McCartney – but Yorke is way more morose, and it works here. For once the rest of the band sound like they’re having fun, too.

 

The other two standout songs for me are “The Bends” and “Bones,” both of which are powerful rockers built around real riffs and memorable vocal melodies. “Just” almost fits into that same category, but while the band gives it their all and there are a couple of really cool parts, the tune just isn’t very good. The instrumental improvement is the real story here – Colin Greenwood has obviously been listening to a lot of Paul McCartney, or maybe Paul McCartney by way of Mike Mills. I won’t pretend to know who’s doing the guitar playing where, because I have no idea, but it’s a lot more varied than on Pablo Honey. Selway doesn’t really contribute much here, but he isn’t bad.

 

Bad. Let me talk more about that. Actually, besides “Fake Plastic Trees,” nothing here is unlistenable. But there are a bunch of somewhat average songs that don’t contribute much to the whole. “(Nice Dream),” “Bullet Proof…I Wish I Was,” and “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” are just boring, with soundalike guitar parts and listless performances by Yorke. A little better are “Black Star” and “Sulk,” but we’re still dealing with basic rock songs that would’ve fit in on Pablo easily. The bassline to “Sulk” sounds cribbed from “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” but I’m probably the only person that’d bother. And “Planet Telex” and “High and Dry” never feel as good as they should be.

 

But a lot of that is just nitpicking. The Bends ain’t great, but it is a very solid album, and I could see myself listening to at least significant chunks of it just for pleasure. And that’s all I’m looking for. I really want to give this album 4 stars, but I feel like it actually deserves 3.5. I hate ultra-specific grading systems, but this is my personal blog so who gives a shit? Let’s compromise and say that it’s a 3.75 out of 5 for now. Next we’ll be getting into the realm of Radiohead albums I actually have some non-infinitesimal experience with. It’s been some ten years or so since I’ve listened to OK Computer, and I have high hopes for it after developing an appreciation for The Bends.

My Iron Lung

I’m really starting to dig this song. Opinion postponed for a while, because I didn’t get a chance to listen to The Bends today. There’s still a bunch of forgettable songs here, but I’m starting to warm to it enough to get it into 3.5 star territory, maybe. I’m going to have high hopes for OK Computer after this.

The Most Influential Band?

This is kind of a down day, since I haven’t listened to The Bends enough to make a formal opinion (sneak preview: meh). But I still feel like writing a little about the claimed influence that Radiohead supposedly has had over the past 1x number of years. Even those who don’t particularly like Radiohead, like me, are quick to give them names like “the most important band in the world,” and, inevitably, “the most influential band in the world.” But is this true?

 

Well…if it is, I don’t see it. The Bends is probably their most copied album – they quickly went onto things that are (perhaps) not so easy to copy – but the influence it’s had seems pretty limited from where I’m sitting. The most commonly cited impact is that on bands like Coldplay and their ilk. Now, I’m not an expert on Coldplay at all, but what I’ve heard (the hits mainly) doesn’t particularly sound like the vast majority of The Bends. Coldplay clearly doesn’t have the same desire to push boundaries as Radiohead, and the only song here that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Coldplay album is “High and Dry.” And, really, none of these bands besides Coldplay themselves have made much of an extended impact in America. Radiohead’s influence on the rock mainstream here is minimal, to say the least, and I’m certainly not passing that off as a Good Thing. Would that there were no bands like this on our side of the Atlantic.

 

But – you might say – I’m just looking at the mainstream. Surely Radiohead, you might say, being one of the most progressive rock bands around these days, has had a greater impact on the indie scene. You might say a lot of things, but that doesn’t make them true. I can’t think of one prominent indie rock band that has the Radiohead of any time period as a strong influence. If anyone’s set the tone for what’s popular right now in indie music, it’s this guy and his buddies.

 

Time will tell, I suppose. However I may feel about them, Radiohead is clearly an extremely popular and respected band, by both common folk and fellow musicians. I couldn’t tell you why they’ve had such little impact so far on the various scenes they touch. Given what a guy with a nice laptop and a home studio can do these days, I don’t buy the argument that they’re just too hard to imitate. Maybe I’m just wrong – I don’t listen to anything approaching the totality of indie and alternative music. If that’s the case, drop me a line and let me know who I’m missing.

Pablo Honey

We start here with Radiohead’s first LP, Pablo Honey. This is the album usually most ignored by the Radiohead fanbase, and there’s good reason for that: it just isn’t anything particularly memorable. Much has been said of their early U2-meets-Seattle sound, but that’s not the problem here; they actually sound pretty good and, more than anything, well-practiced. The problem is that, with the exception of a few songs, everything just kind of floats by. The hooks, when they exist at all, are beyond slight, frequently with the one note per chord melodies typical to the worst of the grunge scene. And the lyrics mostly suck, but that’s not unusual for alt-rock of this time period.

 

The record starts off well, with the first three songs all being pretty good. “Creep” loses some points for being a rewrite of “The Air That I Breathe,” but it probably deserved to be about as big a hit as it was. But then we come to “Stop Whispering,” a really embarrassing R.E.M. imitation. “Dear Sir, I have a complaint, can’t remember what it is”? It’s also, for some reason, the longest song on the album. (Green Plastic claims “Stop Whispering” is a Pixies tribute – say what? Are we thinking of the same Pixies here?) After this, everything just gets fuzzy. “Anyone Can Play Guitar” is kind of cute, but not really lasting. “Ripcord” is another decent tune in the same vein, but after 4 or 5 listens I could not tell you a single thing about the songs between it and “Blow Out,” a whitebread attempt at rock samba with more self-pitying Thom Yorke lyrics before finally culminating in a cool guitar solo.

 

In case I’m sounding harsh, I don’t mean to be. This is a solid debut album, but, putting myself into the point of view of a listener in 1993, I can’t imagine Radiohead ever becoming a favorite band. There’s no indication at all of what’s to come, whether you view that as a good thing or not. Pablo Honey is ultimately forgettable, with little to distinguish it from the myriad other “alternative rock” bands around at the time. Even when Radiohead gets loud, there’s little passion or force behind it – more than anything they sound timid here. They take some cues from Sonic Youth, usually on the best tracks, but they do it with none of the Sonik verve. Radiohead’s most “rawk” album isn’t doing much to diminish my perception of them as being bloodless and wimpy. Let’s say 2.5 out of 5 stars for Pablo Honey.

 

I’ll be looking next at The Bends, usually claimed to be Radiohead’s great leap forward. We’ll see.

The Radiohead Experiment

Everyone who knows me, and I think there are still a few of those who occasionally read this, knows that I dislike Radiohead. Some part of that is just me being contrary, but most of it actually is based on music – I thought Radiohead was just OK, your average alternative rock band, in the 90s, but I actively hated Kid A. It sounded to me like stale “experimentation” lifted from their electronic forebears merged with mediocre rock songwriting. And Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief were just boring. Thom Yorke’s puerile political views that constantly seep into his lyrics haven’t helped with this perception. Actually, Yorke’s lyrics in general have always seemed pretty bad to me.

 

But I can’t help always thinking that I’m not being fair here. Radiohead does have some detractors besides me, but the overwhelming majority of listeners, including people I respect, love them. More than that, they’re viewed as the rock band of today, the band that somehow redeems the mainstream, or something. Every once in a while I try to reevaluate where I stand with certain music that gets a lot of critical respect. Not because I need to align my views with what others have to say – that’s obviously not true if you’ve read a couple entries on this blog – but because it is my opinion that it’s always better to “get” something than it is to not get it. More so in this case, because if I do figure out how to like Radiohead I’ll be rewarded with more than just some more good music to listen to; I’ll be rewarded with supposed all-time classics.

 

So to that end in the upcoming weeks I’m going to attempt to completely revise my views on Radiohead. What I’m going to do is start with Pablo Honey and move all the way on up to In Rainbows, listening to each one at least four times over at least two days. And after each day I’m going to write my impressions of the album. Simple, right? But I felt like it needed a preface, to explain why I’m doing this.

 

If this works out smashingly then I might do Nine Inch Nails next. Them I’ve never hated, but like Radiohead I thought they were decent (but not extraordinary) in the 90s and then just started ignoring them. But it seems like they definitely have a broader audience now than they did then, or maybe their fans have just grown up. I also have more respect for Trent Reznor as a person than for anyone in Radiohead – he genuinely seems like a thoughtful and intelligent guy, and his experimentations in online business have been far more ballsy than Radiohead’s. But we’ll get to that later.

More American Idol

I have a couple of ideas on the back burner, but since I haven’t posted in a while might as well try to kick start things with more American Idol ruminations. This time completely free of a certain former Idol with the initials TH.

American Idol, ’80s Week

I need something to write about, and since I’ve been watching American Idol this season I might as well write about it, no?

 

Overall, this week was pretty underwhelming. Nobody did enough to be safe next week, and only one guy sang badly enough that he needed to go…go. I’ve never really watched American Idol before this year, but the absence of Prince and Michael Jackson songs struck me as odd. I have to assume that this is for legal reasons, since I’m not sure why anyone would sing Simple Minds or mediocore Queen with the two true giants of ’80s music available.

A Note to All Philosophers, Theologians, and People Who Write About That Kind of Stuff

Please stop trying to use quantum mechanics to back up some sort of metaphysical point. You don’t understand what Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle really is, and you have no idea what the implications of Schrödinger’s cat really are. Applying a layman’s understanding of science to philosophy is what lead to social Darwinism.

Pop Music is Art

It’s fun to beat up on Pitchfork Media, and they usually deserve it, but it’s still worth checking them out from time to time. Pitchfork is, apparently, a very big deal in the indie world, and so they’ll often have interesting interviews and other features with artists. One such interview that caught my eye the other day was with the Swedish singer Robyn, who had a couple big U.S. hits in the ’90s but is most known today on this side of the Atlantic for being one of the three European pop stars that it’s hip to like. But I’m not complaining about that, because she does deserve the acclaim. What caught my eye was a comment she made about Max Martin:

 

Max Martin is an interesting example. He’s one of the people that I grew up around, in the studio. He’s still someone that I’m in touch with. I really admire him, and even though we do different things now, he’s still someone I call when I don’t know what to do with a song. He has a very particular way of looking at songs. He is a hit machine. [laughs] That’s his specialty. But that’s what he does. He writes songs. He’s not an artist. He doesn’t have the need for expressing his personal thoughts in a song.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/48760-interview-robyn

As much as I like Robyn, this is a pretty dumb thing to say. Martin would probably agree with her assessment, but that isn’t the point. The artist is not the one who decides whether a particular work is art. Just because a piece of music is created cynically, for money, to crank out hits – whatever – does not mean that in the final summation it isn’t a work of art. What is art may or may not be in the eye of the beholder, but I do know that it isn’t in the eye of the creator.

 

Unfortunately, this conception of pop music is far too common today, and I don’t know why. I think you’d be hard pressed to point out a clear difference between the Max Martins of today and the Burt Bacharachs and Holland-Dozier-Hollands of yesteryear. I would say that maybe this kind of talent is only recognized in retrospect, but since I wasn’t around in the ’60s and ’70s I don’t know whether Phil Spector was looked down on by “serious” artists.

 

Why is it so important that music, if it is to be art, expresses personal thoughts, to use Robyn’s phrasing? We don’t hold other disciplines to the same standard. If a painting looks good and induces some desirable emotion in us, we don’t look to the artist’s motives in making it. We don’t divide Rembrandt’s work into “commissioned” and “uncommissioned” categories. Let’s go even further back. What personal thoughts and emotions, exactly, is Homer expressing in the Odyssey? There we’re dealing with an indisputed work of art that may have been “written” by several different unconnected people over a period of many years. No personal expression there.

 

If it isn’t obvious, my point of view is that what is art is entirely (or at least mostly) subjective. At the base of it art is what gives you pleasure in and of itself. The motives of the creator have nothing to do with it – as can be clearly seen in the occasional reinterpretations of classic advertising images as art. If you can still enjoy something after it is divorced from whatever practical intentions it may have had…then it is art. This nonsense about expressing personal thoughts and feelings is a modern invention. If something is good, then it’s art. Any other distinction is meaningless. Pop music is art, and I’ll take “Since U Been Gone” over Leonard Cohen’s entire oeuvre, regardless of how mercenary Max Martin was when he wrote it.