Radiohead's The Bends Was a Sophomore File No One Noticed Coming

Editor’s Notice: As The Bends celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, Tyler Dunston’s basic evaluation from March of 2020 reminds us that going into this album, Thom Yorke and the gang had been simply twentysomethings, one-hit wonders who actually had no clue what to do subsequent. That’s not how we are inclined to view crucial rock band on the planet, however, sure, it’s true. Radiohead had been as soon as only a band making an attempt to determine issues out for themselves … and The Bends is the place that course of actually started. 

It’s simple to look again on Radiohead’s discography and see the scope of their achievements as inevitable. On reflection, the band have had a near-perfect profession: initially gaining widespread consideration with the much-loved and much-maligned “Creep” and a hit-or-miss debut album largely indebted to grunge and ’80s American indie rock bands like R.E.M. and Pixies after which turning into vital darlings, difficult themselves to stretch their sound to embody new musical concepts. Many see their output as much as 2000’s Child A because the musical-career equal of a mind-expansion meme. The Bends was the album that pressured critics and listeners alike to take them critically — in a way, it was the start of Radiohead as we all know them right now. Nonetheless, as inevitable as it could appear looking back, it was something however on the time.

One in all my favourite anecdotes in regards to the creation of The Bends highlights the vital proven fact that at this level of their careers, Radiohead had been twentysomethings, one-hit wonders who didn’t know what they had been doing. It’s truly the story behind the now-iconic album cowl, the primary one Stanley Donwood, who’s been concerned in all issues Radiohead ever since, did for the band.

Thom Yorke and Donwood met on the College of Exeter, each of them learning artwork and literature. Donwood first collaborated with Radiohead on the duvet for the 1994 single “My Iron Lung”, which might later seem on The Bends. Impressed by that single, Yorke and Donwood, two youngsters with an old-school video digicam, went to a hospital to get footage of an iron lung, which, in keeping with Donwood, turned out to be “not very attention-grabbing to take a look at.” They discovered a extra attention-grabbing topic within the type of a CPR model. After recording the footage, they performed it on a tv and photographed the display screen, creating the grainy, shimmering variations in colour you see on the duvet.

I like this story as a result of it reveals a facet of Radiohead that undercuts the mystique generated through the years by the band’s vital adulation, far-reaching affect, and exploration of more and more insular, experimental sounds on later releases. The Bends reveals us a gaggle of younger artists who’re very a lot nonetheless figuring it out, jaded early on by sudden fame, throwing concepts towards the wall to see what works. We see this strategy of creation-as-discovery within the story behind the album art work in addition to within the document itself.

This must experiment stemmed simply as a lot from youth and inexperience because it did from desperation. The success of “Creep” took a toll on the band. Earlier than they’d an opportunity to find who they had been for themselves, numerous listeners had already put them in a field: they had been by-product, they had been a one-hit marvel, outlined by a single track initially of their profession. After a cancelled set, Thom Yorke instructed NME, “Bodily, I’m utterly fucked, and mentally I’ve had sufficient,” and the band’s document label hit them with an ultimatum. Although many have come to admire Radiohead for his or her consistency, within the lead-up to The Bends, it was turning into more and more unclear whether or not the band had a future in any respect.

When opening observe “Planet Telex” was launched as a cut up single with “Excessive and Dry”, it pointed towards the long run, however nobody, maybe not even Radiohead, knew it but. The loops, the keyboards, the studio prospers, the shimmering tone, and the summary lyrics — all, looking back, level to the band’s future. It’s troublesome to take heed to “Planet Telex”, and far of The Bends typically, with out pondering of the place the band would go from there, with out listening to the suggestions of OK Pc and the artificial frigidness of Child A. That opening single sounds nothing like Pablo Honey. It’s simple to see the band Radiohead had been turning into in it, however the artistic course of was definitely not as clear because it appears now. There was a haphazardness to the best way this track got here collectively. Story goes, the band laid that document down in a single evening, after an evening of consuming. Thom Yorke was mendacity on the ground as he recorded the vocals (in a single take). They usually had been going to name the track “Planet Xerox” earlier than they realized it was trademarked. They had been nonetheless younger, unaccustomed to fame, however they’d one thing to show, and so they had been spitballing, following their impulses and inspirations to actually thrilling outcomes.

One factor they had been certain of was that they didn’t wish to create a second Pablo Honey. Though The Bends nonetheless bears the affect of grunge and ’80s indie rock, musically it was a large leap. The guitar taking part in grew to become extra advanced and mercurial, oscillating between placid strums and frenetic freak-outs. We see this duality in a track like “Good Dream” beginning with chords and lyrics by Yorke earlier than being expanded and sophisticated by Johnny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien. You may hear this tendency to fuck up (in a great way) a would-be simple track throughout the document, notably in tracks like “My Iron Lung”, which purposefully flouts the constraints of a track like “Creep”.

Greenwood’s affect (notably his string preparations, that are by the way everywhere in the band’s most up-to-date album, A Moon Formed Pool) grew to become extra pronounced. And The Bends noticed the doorway of Nigel Godrich, the band’s longtime producer and de facto sixth member, who did engineering for the document and produced “Black Star”, which might have been a extra simple track if it weren’t imbued with such menace and stressed power. This stressed power permeates the document.

On The Bends, Radiohead weren’t content material — to be one other Britpop band, to be a one-hit marvel, to be what they had been final yr, final month, final minute. That restlessness has satirically been a significant component within the band’s consistency through the years — an unwillingness to settle, to proceed making the music they’ve all the time made. Their fixed reinvention has given the phantasm of consistency and inevitability, nevertheless it was the band’s frantic want for discovery, for making an attempt new issues, which have made them the band they’re right now. As Thom Yorke stated shortly after the discharge of Child A, “The very best issues are sometimes those who go someplace you weren’t anticipating.”

Important Tracks: “Planet Telex”, “Pretend Plastic Timber”, and “Road Spirit (Fade Out)”

Choose up a duplicate of The Bends right here…

The Bends Paintings

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