THE BENDS

After a debut album that was still firmly rooted into early 90's alternative rock ranging from The Pixies and Nirvana over U2 to shoegazer brit pop, The Bends shows a band that has not entirely grown out of its initial influences yet but that still sounds very much like Radiohead and nothing else. It's something that always pleases my ears.

A second point speaking in favour of this album is the uniform quality of the material. There are no weak cuts here and plenty of variation, such as pop anthems like Fake Plastic Trees, a song with a definite Catherine Wheel flavour, one of the strongest 90's indie bands in my book. There are guitar rock gems like Bones and My Iron Lung that Hüsker Dü wouldn't be ashamed of. There are plenty of softer moments as well that show the atmospheric side of Radiohead. It's something they would improve at later on but Nice Dream and the gorgeous Street Spirit can already serve as accomplished examples of their reflective genius.

Musical proficiency is obviously not the focus in this style of music, all attention is on songwriting and on the poignant delivery of mr Yorke, but the band plays very adequately and creates excellently arranged pop songs that reach a good level of sophistication.

With the opening Planet Telex, the album has only one song that rings a prog bell here, but in the Crossover Prog field, this a certain 4 star album.