OK COMPUTER

There's lots of words people pass around for this album like "experimental", "weird", "sparse", "lush", "depressing", "classic", "magnum opus", and my personal favorite "messy masterpiece". Such a trendy album. What's really funny about that previous few sentences is all the terms used above are spot on. OK Computer is "depressing" ("Let Down", "No Surprises").OK Computer is experimental ("Paranoid Android"). OK Computer is sparse ("Exit Music", "The Tourist"). OK Computer is lush ("Airbag", "Subterranean Homesick Alien"). OK Computer is weird ("Fitter Happier", "Climbing Up the Walls"). OK Computer is all those things and more, thus the album has come to take on a history of its own. You'd be hard pressed to find a legitimate "Greatest Albums" list that doesn't have this towards the top, and rightfully so. It's the kind of album that makes a band, and one that can often pigeon-hole. How the hell do you top this? For Radiohead it was exploring their sound to a profound extreme while still being considered rock. Kid A is a great result of the frustration of trying to top something that they couldn't. As for OK Computer, it's the kind of album that taken piecemeal feels as though it can't work, but somehow the track numbering is right on, and the album became a symbol for the frustration of the '90s. And who could argue? This is as good as it gets. One of the many symbols of '90s rock. 4.5 stars

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