Radiohead have been nominated, for the second time, for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and we'll find out in December if they got in. And they're probably the most archetypal 'classic band' out of the nominees, but they've often shied away from show biz extravagance, and have made several comments about not being terribly interested in the HOF. So it's easy to imagine Radiohead getting inducted but going to the Dire Straits route of participating as little as possible and letting Def Leppard or someone else take the mantle of the night's big splashy headline induction. Still, regardless of how you feel about the band or the Hall, it seems like a no-brainer that they'd end up there eventually.

Radiohead deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. You
2. Bones
3. Planet Telex
4. The Bends
5. Subterranean Homesick Alien
6. Airbag
7. Climbing Up the Walls
8. Everything In Its Right Place
9. The National Anthem
10. Morning Bell
11. Life In A Glasshouse
12. Packt Like Sardines In A Crushed Tin Box
13. A Punch Up At A Wedding
14. Myxomatosis
15. 15 Step
16. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
17. Give Up The Ghost
18. Identikit

Track 1 from Pablo Honey (1993)
Tracks 2, 3 and 4 from The Bends (1995)
Tracks 5, 6 and 7 from OK Computer (1997)
Tracks 8, 9 and 10 from Kid A (2000)
Tracks 11 and 12 from Amnesiac (2001)
Tracks 13 and 14 from Hail To The Thief (2003)
Tracks 15 and 16 from In Rainbows (2007)
Track 17 from The King of Limbs (2011)
Track 18 from A Moon Shaped Pool (2016)

I was 11 when "Creep" came out, and even though I had only considered myself a fan and follower of rock music for a year or two at the time, it was one of my first experiences really feeling embarrassed by how broad and on-the-nose a song was, particularly an angsty alternative rock song. I loved the sound of Johnny Greenwood's cha-chunk guitar leading into the chorus, and the way Thom Yorke's voice soared on the outro, though. So when the band overcame their one hit wonder status and delivered a great album in The Bends, and continued to blossom creatively from there, I was a little surprised, but not too surprised. Even Pablo Honey has aged better than an album named after a Jerky Boys joke has any right to.

I got caught up in the excitement around OK Computer and Kid A as much as anybody, and those are undeniably great albums. But I've always felt a little less credulous about the acclaim around Radiohead than other people. The way a band who sounded great with 3 guitars started making lots of songs with no guitars, and built their career out of catchy radio singles but then made a point of releasing no singles from an album, it just felt a little over the top to me. The way they reinvented their sound was inspired, but it wasn't any bigger a leap than Achtung Baby or Berlin era Bowie -- if anything they were taking cues from earlier reinventions like those.

So I spent a good decade or more feeling like the conventional wisdom about just how unconventional and groundbreaking Radiohead was had gotten kind of over-the-top and ridiculous. And their albums after Kid A and Amnesiac felt notable for how unsurprising they were, how the band seemed to be methodically subtracting elements from their sound in favor of minimalism. I heard so little to love, so little to react to at all, in In Rainbows that I felt really out of step with the worship around that record in particular. If anything, the widely maligned The King of Limbs appealed to me more.

So yeah, sometimes I feel like Liam Gallagher when I think about Radiohead and just wanna listen to "Bones" and lament that the band got too pretentious to write riffs like that anymore. But it really is enjoyable to kind of subtract the most obvious songs from the band's discography and listen to their creative development in chronological order, I really do admire some of the things they've been willing to try. I love the 5/4 time signature and they've written some great songs in it -- "Morning Bell," "Everything In Its Right Place," and "15 Step."

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 11, 2018 at 9:32 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.