OK Computer review

OK Computer is the third album by Radiohead, a widely admired English Alternative Rock band. Best summed up as the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band of the 90s, this diverse and technically complex album features a wide range of sounds and plenty of depressing but relevant social commentary. This is an album I always look forward to talking about so I'll just get started immediately.

Tracks:

1. Airbag: 9/10 an autobiographical song with excellent lyrics and an awesome instrumental. The title is very misleading. This is a full-on, high speed burst of goosebump inducing musical genius with not an airbag or safety net in sight.

2. Paranoid Android: 10/10 Radiohead's Stairway to Heaven/Bohemian Rhapsody/A Day in the Life moment. This song criticizes society in the most beautiful way imaginable while the 'Rain on Me' section is a stroke of genius and possibly the best moment of the album.

3. Subterranean Homesick Alien: 8/10 this excellent third track is a song of contradictions. It's 18 years old but it sounds futuristic and ahead of our time. It's quite depressing but it's so brilliantly played and beautiful it's accompanied by a sense of euphoria, although sometimes the lyrics are a bit difficult to understand (A problem which applies to the whole album).

4. Exit Music (For A Film): 10/10 written for Romeo + Juliet (1996) this is another song which shows that no matter what instrument Radiohead plays and even if they're singing about stale sandwiches or a trip to the bathroom they'll still manage to fill it to the brim with emotion and innovation.

5. Let Down: 10/10 haunting, brilliantly composed, dense and extremely intense, this near perfect track is the equivalent of an exhilarating bungee jump (without the chord) into the abyss. Incredible.

6. Karma Police: 7/10 a well done and interesting song but it's a bit boring. The 'This is what you get' bit stands out, while the 'For a minute there I lost myself' bit seems to be from the point of view of the album briefly losing its way.

7. Fitter Happier: 8/10 it might take a couple of listens to fully understand, but it's very creative and few bands could make a robotic voice reading out phrases so thought provoking.

8. Electioneering: 8/10 the heaviest and most conventional song on the track, this may not be as innovative as the rest of it but it's still a fine rock song with more abstract lyrics to decipher.

9. Climbing Up the Walls: 9/10 Thom Yorke's eerie vocals, the haunting base-line and creepy lyrics make this the scariest song on the album. Listen to this with the lights on.

10. No Surprises: 10/10 boasting maybe my favourite intro of the album, this is a quieter but still highly meaningful song which gets under your skin despite its covering of the same themes of the other songs on the album.

11. Lucky: 9/10 parts of the song are overdone but overall this is another powerful song which if on the album of a lesser band it'd be one of the album's highlights.

12. The Tourist: 8/10 the way it repeats itself several times is pretty lazy but the song is still beautiful.

Best song: Let Down
Worst song: Karma Police

Summary: An album I always look forward to talking about, OK Computer is many things. It's haunting, powerful, scary, hypnotic, experimental, innovative, thrilling, entertaining and overall completely and utterly brilliant. One of the best albums of all time, this boasts complex, inventive and unbelievably catchy sounds, beautiful abstract lyrics, themes which remain relevant and a true sense of artistry. It's a masterpiece. OK?

Final rating: 10/10