Radiohead
– The Bends
The Bends is the moment Radiohead went from being a scrappy alt-rock band with a surprise hit to something far more ambitious and unpredictable. It’s a record that still clings to the bombast of mid-’90s guitar rock, but there’s an unease running through it, a sense that they’re already looking for a way out of the genre’s confines. The songs hit hard, but they also drift, shimmer, and collapse into moments of fragile beauty. It’s not a full reinvention—there’s still plenty of anthemic energy—but it’s clear they’re pulling at the edges of what’s expected.

Choice Tracks.
From the first shimmering chords of “Planet Telex,” you know The Bends isn’t here to make you comfortable. That cavernous reverb, the way Thom Yorke’s voice floats above the mix like he’s singing from inside a snow globe—it’s beautiful, sure, but it’s also disorienting, like waking up in a place you don’t remember falling asleep. Then there’s “The Bends” itself, a full-throttle, teeth-clenching explosion of everything that made early Radiohead great: guitars that snarl and soar in equal measure, Yorke yelping like he’s trying to break through a glass ceiling that keeps lowering itself.
“High and Dry” is the closest thing to a folk song in their catalog, deceptively simple on the surface, but the way Yorke stretches out those vowels—like he’s already regretting every word he’s saying—turns it into something heavier. And then “Fake Plastic Trees” arrives, the moment where Radiohead goes from a good alt-rock band to something else entirely. Just an acoustic guitar, a ghostly organ, and Yorke sounding like he’s crumbling under the weight of his own metaphors. It builds, it breaks, and by the time he lets out that final falsetto wail, you’re not sure if you just heard a love song or a eulogy.
But The Bends isn’t all sadness in slow motion. “Just” is a smirking, riff-happy slap in the face, with Jonny Greenwood’s guitar lines practically laughing at you as they dart in and out of the mix. And “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”? That’s the real closer, the slow, hypnotic descent into something too big and too dark to name. Every note feels inevitable, like it was carved into stone long before the band played a single chord. That’s the trick with The Bends—it makes sadness feel colossal, makes euphoria sound fragile, and leaves you staring at the sky, wondering what just hit you.
The production is lush but never overblown, giving space for every texture to breathe. Guitars don’t just roar; they bend, warp, and bleed into the atmosphere. The rhythms shift between tight precision and dreamlike sway. There’s a tension in the way everything is assembled, as if the music is trying to break free from its own structure. And then there’s the voice at the center of it all, cutting through the mix like someone on the verge of revelation or collapse.
What makes The Bends endure is its emotional weight. The paranoia, the yearning, the exhaustion—these aren’t just themes, they seep into the music itself. There’s a rawness here that future Radiohead albums would smooth out or bury under abstraction, but here it’s front and center, naked and undeniable. It’s the last time they’d sound this direct, but it’s also the moment they became undeniable.