The Bends is my favorite album ever

'OK Computer' deserves all of the accolades that it gets, but I'll always prefer 'The Bends' as a much more listenable and accessible abum. I actually don't care for their later stuff all that much either.

The Bends is a perfect and really accessible album. It's my favorite Radiohead work.

I think a few years ago I would have agreed, and while I still think its one of the best albums of the 90's (sure, OK Computer is brilliant, but i'd much rather listen to The Bends), I think In Rainbows is the culmination of all their work.

That said, for me, picking a favourite Radiohead album is always gonna be right and always gonna be wrong. Provided you don't pick Pablo Honey, which is just always wrong.

I'm still favoring OK Computer, but the Bends is the close second.

Overplayed or no, Fake Plastic Trees is still one of the most heartbreaking things ever written. The fact that there's 11 other tracks even close being that great is still astonishing.

I still think OK Computer's the hands down winner, though.

Love everything Radiohead.

But Kid A is my favorite. Haunts the shit out of me.

Well, Bends, Computer and Kid A has to be the best 3 albums release I've heard in my lifetime.

And Clark: Fake Plastic Tree has to be one of the best songs I've heard live. So good.

Me too, but I'm pretty sure I like Kid A best because that's what I heard first, that's what Radiohead was at the time I started paying attention.

Nothing wrong with The Bends, that's for sure.

The Bends is a great britpop album, but Bones and Planet Telex and Sulk aren't very good songs and point to the band still unsure of where it's going...

This album would be in my top 50 even if it only had "Street Spirit" on it.

I wouldn't go so far as calling anything on The Bends a "bad song," but the band was still sort of playing it safe. It's an easy album to like and even love, but I have a hard time ranking it above most of the later stuff, if only because each subsequent album was riskier yet, on each, they make good on the risks taken.

But there's something to be said for straightforwardly rocking out, too, which is probably why the band continues to regularly play songs from The Bends in concert. They're probably less challenging and maybe more fun to play than a lot of the meticulously arranged stuff from later on.

Hail to the Thief is accessible as all hell, but also represents Radiohead being a little more diverse and interesting in their sound. The Bends has some fantastic songs but it does feel like a precursor of sorts to OK Computer (although Street Spirit and No Surprises, is that Bends or OK?, are some of my favourite songs by the band)

Hell, from what I can tell even Yorke hated the album. Even when Creep got to be so popular. Any here listen to his solo album as well?

You'll probably dig In Rainbows. It sounds more like OK or HTTF than the ones in-between.

Put another way: I love the ones you hate, and I don't particularly love In Rainbows, so by that logic, you shouldn't be worried.

I'm not looking down on it; it's very good. But, in that it's not as dense and ambitious, it's roughly the same album every time I hear it, whereas I hear new things all the time when I listen to a lot of the later albums. That's not to say it's not a pleasant experience when I listen to The Bends.

If I want heavy guitars and more of a direct emotional thing, it's probably the best choice. But they aimed lower artistically with The Bends than they did with Kid A and Hail to the Thief, for instance, so the achievement of hitting the target just isn't quite as impressive.

Weird, I didn't realize that Pablo Honey was so disliked.

I still skip past "Creep" every time, though. So sick of that song.

What = Weird?

Because Radiohead's later albums really aren't that weird. Sure, their experimental, but seriously, their still fairly mainstream.

I hate 'Creep.' I'm pretty sure the band hates 'Creep.'

I'm like a bizarro-universe Radiohead fan. The Bends just doesn't hold my interest, but I can listen to Amnesiac over and over again. This may be related to DaveB's notion of getting something new out of the later albums on every listen. I mean, I actually *like* "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors", among other songs that a lot of Radiohead fans seem to hate.

In a rock/pop context, they're pretty weird. Also, they're often very weird compositionally speaking, even when they sound like they're not. There are some very strange timing things and chord changes going on.

I kinda agree with this. A lot of Kid A is damn catchy, especially the second half. And all the songs have recognizable structures.

Amnesiac might be a different (that is, weirder) story. People are still arguing over the time signature of "Pyramid Song," I think. But it's still a pretty piece of music to my ears, not some intentionally unlistenable monstrosity.

edit: oh, awesome. This looks dumb after Dave's post.

The title track and "National Anthem," okay, weird. But, like I said, the second half is different, and it strikes me as almost poppy. Maybe because I've listened a thousand times (or maybe because I don't know rock music well enough to know when something is deviating from tradition). "Optimistic," especially, could show up on the radio anytime and fit right in.

Oh, and kingfan, if you do check out In Rainbows, don't forget the second disc, which includes the great "Bangers & Mash."

It might be that your conscious mind isn't getting the weirdness of it, but your unconscious mind is, and that's why you find Kid A so appealing. In Daniel Levitin's This Is Your Brain on Music, there's a bunch of info on how we unconsciously develop an understanding of what's typical and atypical in music - basically a layperson's music theory - and when we hear artists tweak these concepts, it stimulates us.

Probably. I will read that.

Though, just to be clear, I'm not saying the songs are simplistic. I'm just saying they're not the Funny Games of music. (which is sometimes what it sounds like when people talk about these albums)

I think it all depends on what you listen to music for.

The albums from Kid A on are going to sound pretty foreign to someone who's very attuned to music that's dependent on dynamic changes to emphasize the structure. The ultimate example in rock would be something like Nevermind-era Nirvana - the verses are quiet, the choruses are loud, the bridge is exactly where you expect it to be and usually has a guitar solo. But there's also plenty of classical and jazz that's sort of along the same lines. The changes are easy to hear, and they're familiar. It might take just a slight tweaking to these structures to make a real impact on folks who are really into this stuff - a great guitar hook here and there, the occasional rhythmic change, etc.

On the other hand, if you're more into melodies with less regard for form or dynamics, yeah, there's nothing too jarring on the post-OK Computer stuff. Maybe "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" and some of the others, but it's generally pretty smooth sailing on the melody front.

In a way, this is kind of like Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, which is a hugely innovative album in its break from chord progressions as the basis for improvisation. The thing is that if you don't know anything about chord progressions, it doesn't sound jarring at all - because this modal jazz is all about melody, it sounds very pretty to most music fans.

Not that Radiohead come even close to a Davis-like pioneering of the various unusual things they've thrown into the mix on recent albums - but, for a vastly popular band, they're pretty friggin' out there. The entirety of "Idioteque" hinges on a sample from a piece of early electronic music. The band just happened to come up with such a great, insistent beat and vocal line that it's easy to appreciate.

And fuck yeah, Radiohead playing Buenos Aires on March 25th!

One of the best live show was Radiohead at La Place des Arts, 2 years ago, as they were testing their now album. Amazing set, and to top it off, we were sitting 2 rows right in front of Arcade Fire. TAKE THAT!

I will, I saw them at Bonnaroo. And I was hippie flippin' at the time.

BOO-YAHHH!!!

This is excellent, Tati. any other tour date? link? I will do my best to be there.

Chile and Brazil are set as well. So no need to come to Argentina!

Fucking great. The news reached the newspaper right now! We are the first ones. Thanks Grinbank! The cheapest ticket is 40 USD.

I prefer "The Bends" to "Ok Computer" but then i consider "Climbing up the walls" to be my favourite "Radiohead" track.

I don't think any of their albums would make my top 10 list though?

I've always said that while I think OK Computer is Radiohead's best album, The Bends is my favorite, but that's for pure the "rock out" factor, coupled with the fact that The Bends has two of my favorite songs ever (Fake Plastic Trees and Street Spirit Fade Out). As an album, and piece of art, OK Computer is tough to beat, but I find myself listening to Bends more than any other Radiohead Album.

Tomorrow I'll buy the tickets.
The bends is their seminal work, most of the cues are there. The homonymous song is great and as bombastic Colin & co could sound today.
Street Spirit is incredible and the last lines became the best way to end a track and a disc. I just don't like most of the sound/production involved.

"Black Star" has to be my favourite track of The Bends. I can't say i was that taken with Thom Yorke's solo album,however i did really enjoy the track "Rabbit in your headlights" that he did with UNKLE on their Psyence Fiction album.That's a bloody good tune.

Any reason why Pablo Honey is so disliked?

Other than "Creep", which sucks.

Actually, I think "Creep" is one of the only songs that holds up, but that might have to do with the fact that it's more subversive than it's given credit for. The melody line is largely a lift from The Hollies' "The Air That I Breathe," and I like to think that Yorke & Co. were having a little fun in dropping such an over-the-top romantic reference into their little ode to isolation and self-hate.

I suspect the album is retroactively disliked only because the band that made it is the same one that later made The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A, Amnesiac, HTTT, and In Rainbows. If they never made another album after Pablo Honey, Radiohead would probably be mentioned in the same breath as the Verve Pipe, Remy Zero, or Spacehog. I kind of like some songs by those bands, but they're pretty marginal - hard to outright hate.

To take a slightly more controversial stand, I suspect that this might be the case among the general public even if Radiohead had stopped at The Bends, which is basically just a really good version of the albums that bands like the ones I mentioned were making at the time. Discerning listeners might recognize the difference in quality, but, without OK Computer, I don't think Radiohead would have established the reputation they have now as the most popular experimental rock band in the world. They'd just be another 90s guitar-rock band in the public's mind, and you'd have culty fans arguing their superiority possibly to little effect.

Personally I've always loved Pablo Honey. I think "Anyone Can Play Guitar" is in my top 10 Radiohead songs still. I think the album just gets overshadowed by "Creep", and then by the subsequent albums.

I think "Anyone Can Play Guitar" has the first inklings of what would come to constitute a great Bends/OK Computer-era Radiohead song.

And then the bouncy chorus hits. And completely kills the slightly menacing mood the opening of the song built so well. So terrible.

I just can't put Bends over OK Computer. (For the record, I'm a Kid A guy.)

I don't hate Pablo Honey - its an ok piece of early nineties rock. Its just not representative of anything else Radiohead have done. There are tracks on it that I like as songs and I have the album on my iPod - Blow Out in particular kinda holds up as a decent piece of music.

But Radiohead hit greatness with their second album and have not looked back. So to claim Pablo as your favourite of their works is essentially to not really be a Radiohead fan, if I can say that without sounding like an elitist snob.

I got two surprises here: one that it's such an obvious rip, secondly that I've heard the chorus of that song a million times, but never heard the verses until now - I didn't even make the connection as to what song it really was until that chorus finally came in.

As for Radiohead, The Bends is a good album that made me a fan as a tender 13 year old back in 1996, but I kind of grew up along with the band and going back to the early stuff it's kind of disconcerting hearing them knocking out straightforward alternative rock. They're well written songs but I don't think it has anything near the depth of their best stuff.

Hillarious video to show how far they've come: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=sXUBE_wiPtU

Decent scream from Thom though!