In praise of: The Bends

It wasn't until a few years later, when I was in college and OK Computer was making waves (though, again, I didn't have much interest), that a good friend and dorm-mate of mine lent me a copy of The Bends, and even then the album took a while to sink in as I kept it over a winter break, before I was able to tell my friend that I thought it was "a really good straightforward rock album" (I was a total jazz nerd at the time, so I'm not even sure how much of a complement this was)

Those were days of smuggled Everclear clandestinely added to coke bottles and pot smoke blown out the window through "sploofs" (dryer sheets stretched over toilet paper tubes), of staying up until 4am playing Bond or talking agitatedly about what we believed to be "philosophy".

Wish You Were Here or High and Dry or Fade Out were guaranteed dorm singalong hits and we'd bang them out on our guitars in the lounge for the 40th time, laughing along with everyone while scowling at them inside for being such suckers.

Seven years later I've matured somewhat and Radiohead hasn't, and neither has my friend, who is basically "lost" to drugs and self-abuse.

But The Bends, inexplicably, remains standing, has grown in stature for me. It's my favorite Radiohead album by a mile, and one of my favorite albums period.

I want to live and breathe
I want to be part of the human race.

I sometimes think that journalists were so quick to declare the "death of irony" because they were already longing for its death. It was the End of History and a college student's biggest worry, more than ever, seemed to be ennui.

I'm lying in a bar with my drip feed on
talking to my girlfriend waiting for something to happen
I wish it was the sixties
I wish I could be happy
I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen.

And something did happen - hard not to think of that event as the drums and guitars build after the word "happen".

I don't know if I can take this "theme" any further, but I listened to The Bends on a bad cassette today for the first time in a long time, and it was as incredible as ever, and then got really sad when I couldn't find my CD copy and then got sad to think about the friend that I've essentially let go, who's become more or less dead to me, especially after I found out that he beat up his (now ex) girlfriend, who is a friend of mine.

The Bends is relentlessly good, at least until the last song (which is usually where I fade out as well.) And strangely, it manages to be so relying heavily on songs with similar chord progressions (The Bends, Bones, Black Star, and Sulk are all variations on the classic D-C-G combo) and stylistic similarities -- never through out the album, in spite of this, do I ever feel like any song is just a rehash of the idea on another song.

Indeed, any of the first five songs sound like they'd make great album openers. And by song #10, it's almost baffling to hear a song as great as Black Star, not to mention that it's followed up by Sulk

You're so pretty
When you're on your knees
Disaffected and eager to please

In fact two of the album's best-known songs (High and Dry, Fake Plastic Trees) are more or less overshadowed by the rest of the album, and even those are pretty good.

Jonny Greenwood's noisy noodling is given its place yet still kept in check enough to keep the album palatable (and believe me, I'm not entirely against bloat and pretension - I'm a Yes fan, for crying out loud!) And may I add that the drumming is sick.

Why, oh why, have I written such a long, rambling paean to The Bends? Being stuck at home with a sixpack of Anchor Steam probably helps to explain it. I raise an Anchor Steam to you, Radiohead-of-1995. May you remain frozen in time forever!

― Hurting (Hurting), Sunday, 18 September 2005 03:11 (7 years ago) Permalink