7.
Radiohead – The Bends
I should have written this down in chronological order! It would have made more sense to talk about this before the other bits we’ve just gone through. But yeah, Radiohead’s The Bends, there were a lot of albums I was listening to around that time that I enjoyed, but I think this is one of the few I can still enjoy listening to now. I was never really someone who focused on lyrics – for me voice is more often a sonic texture, and criminally when I was younger would get words in songs so embarrassingly wrong that I’d just learn to shut the fuck up about it. But that album, it spoke to me, and I could feel the emotion that was coming from it.
I do think Radiohead are a great band, I love the way that over the years they’ve challenged their listeners, but they’ve really taken their job very seriously, and been a good force for music in general. I actually can’t say that I’m listening to their last however many albums anything like how I used to listen to The Bends, but I’ve got respect for them, I respect the way they play the game they’re in, essentially. But musically, that album, it ticked whatever that emo box was [laughs] in a big way. It’s a good album of great tracks from start to finish, and still relevant now.
