Description
Label Review.
1997 album remastered with bonus disc containing all 8 b-sides and 3 previously unreleased tracks from the OK Computer sessions.
Our Overview.
Anticipation for Radiohead’s third album, originally released in June 1997 was pretty high. Their previous album had proved that there was much more to the band than ‘Creep’ from the first one. ‘The Bends’ was a slow burner and eventually proved a popular and critical success. However, it did position them as a classic rock band and phrases like “the new U2” were bandied around.
They returned in May 1997 with new single ‘Paranoid Android’, a six minute opus which switched from acoustics to hard rock to choral work and was in fact three different songs fused together. A bold choice for first single from the album it became their biggest hit to date and was followed into the Top 10 by two more singles: ‘Karma Police’ and ‘No Surprises’.
The album saw the band move away from the rock stylings of their first two records and into more esoteric territory. They made sure that amongst the experimentation, strong melodies and songwriting remained in place and the success of this work lead to readers of Q magazine voting it the best album ever only a year after it’s release!
In 2016, Radiohead acquired the rights to their EMI catalogue and this is the first band authorised reissue of anything from this period (the band had nothing to do with the 2009 reissue). The album has been remastered for the first time and not only contains all the b-sides from the three singles but three more songs from the sessions which never saw the light of day at the time are also included.