The Bends (album)
The Bends is the second studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 13 March 1995 by Parlophone. It was produced by John Leckie, with extra production by Radiohead, Nigel Godrich and Jim Warren. The Bends combines guitar songs and ballads, with more restrained arrangements and cryptic lyrics than Radiohead's debut album, Pablo Honey (1993).
The Bends
13 March 1995
1993 ("High and Dry")
February–November 1994
London Astoria, London
- RAK, London
- The Manor, Oxfordshire
- Abbey Road, London
48:33
- John Leckie
- Radiohead
- Nigel Godrich
- Jim Warren
Work began at RAK Studios, London, in February 1994. Tensions were high, with pressure from Parlophone to match sales of Radiohead's debut single, "Creep", and progress was slow. After an international tour in May and June, Radiohead resumed work at Abbey Road in London and the Manor in Oxfordshire. The Bends was Radiohead's first collaboration with Godrich and the cover artist Stanley Donwood, who have worked on every Radiohead album since.
Several singles were released, backed by music videos: "My Iron Lung", the double A-side "High and Dry / Planet Telex", "Fake Plastic Trees", "Just", and Radiohead's first top-five entry on the UK Singles Chart, "Street Spirit (Fade Out)". "The Bends" was also released as a single in Ireland. A live video, Live at the Astoria, was released on VHS. Radiohead toured extensively in support of The Bends, including US tours supporting R.E.M. and Alanis Morissette.
The Bends reached number four on the UK Albums Chart, but failed to build on the success of "Creep" outside the UK, reaching number 88 on the US Billboard 200. It received greater acclaim than Pablo Honey, including a nomination for Best British Album at the Brit Awards 1996, and elevated Radiohead from one-hit-wonders to one of the most recognised British bands. It is frequently named one of the greatest albums of all time, cited in lists including Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums and all three editions of Rolling Stone's lists of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The Bends is credited for influencing a generation of post-Britpop acts, such as Coldplay, Muse and Travis. It is certified platinum in the US and quadruple platinum in the UK.
Background[edit]
Radiohead released their debut album, Pablo Honey, in 1993. By the time they began their first US tour early that year, their debut single, "Creep", had become a hit.[1] The band felt pressured by the success and mounting expectations.[2] Following the tours, the singer, Thom Yorke, became ill and Radiohead cancelled an appearance at Reading Festival. He told NME: "Physically I'm completely fucked and mentally I've had enough."[3]
According to some reports, Radiohead's record company, EMI, gave them six months to "get sorted" or be dropped. EMI's A&R head, Keith Wozencroft, denied this, saying: "Experimental rock music was getting played and had commercial potential. People voice different paranoias, but for the label [Radiohead] were developing brilliantly from Pablo Honey."[3]
After Radiohead finished recording Pablo Honey, Yorke played the co-producer Paul Q. Kolderie a demo tape of new material with the working title The Benz. Kolderie was shocked to find the songs were "all better than anything on Pablo Honey".[3] The guitarist Ed O'Brien later said: "After all that touring on Pablo Honey ... the songs that Thom was writing were so much better. Over a period of a year and a half, suddenly, bang."[4] Kolderie credited Radiohead's Pablo Honey tours for "turning them into a tight band".[5]
For their next album, Radiohead selected the producer John Leckie, who had produced records by acts they admired,[6] including Magazine.[3] The drummer, Philip Selway, said Radiohead were reassured by how relaxed and open-minded Leckie was on their first meeting.[6] According to O'Brien, the success of "Creep" meant that Radiohead were not in debt to EMI and so had more freedom on their next album.[7] EMI asked Radiohead to deliver a followup to "Creep" for the American market; however, according to Leckie, Radiohead had disowned "Creep" and did not "think in terms of making hit singles".[3]
Recording was postponed so Leckie could work on the album Carnival of Light, by another Oxford band, Ride.[8] Radiohead used the extra time to rehearse in a disused barn on an Oxfordshire fruit farm in January 1994.[9][10] Yorke said: "We had all of these songs and we really liked them, but we knew them almost too well ... so we had to sort of learn to like them again before we could record them, which is odd."[9]
Music[edit]
The Bends has been described as alternative rock[20] and indie rock.[21] Like Pablo Honey, it features guitar-oriented rock songs, but its songs are "more spacey and odd", according to The Gazette's Bill Reed.[22] The music is more eclectic than Pablo Honey;[23] Colin Greenwood said Radiohead wanted to distinguish themselves from Pablo Honey and that The Bends better represented their style.[24] Pitchfork wrote that it contrasted warmth and tension, riffs and texture, and rock and post-rock.[25] Several critics identified it as a Britpop album, though Radiohead disliked Britpop, seeing it as a "backwards-looking" pastiche.[26][27][28]
The critic Simon Reynolds wrote that The Bends brought an "English art rock element" to the fore of Radiohead's sound.[29] According to Kolderie, "The Bends was neither an English album nor an American album. It's an album made in the void of touring and travelling. It really had that feeling of, 'We don't live anywhere and we don't belong anywhere.'"[16] Reed described the album as "intriguingly disturbed" and "bipolar". He likened "The Bends" to the late music of the Beatles, described "My Iron Lung" as hard rock, and noted more subdued sounds on "Bullet Proof..I Wish I Was" and "High and Dry", showcasing Radiohead's "more plaintive and meditative side".[22]
Rolling Stone described The Bends as a "mix of sonic guitar anthems and striking ballads", with lyrics evoking a "haunted landscape" of sickness, consumerism, jealousy and longing.[30] Several songs evoke a "sense of a disintegrated or disconnected subject".[31] The journalist Mac Randall described the lyrics as "a veritable compendium of disease, disgust and depression" that nonetheless become uplifting in the context of the "inviting" and "powerful" arrangements.[11] Jonny Greenwood said The Bends was about "illness and doctors… revulsion about our own bodies".[18] Yorke said it was "an incredibly personal album, which is why I spent most of my time denying that it was personal at all".[18] The album title, a term for decompression sickness, references Radiohead's rapid rise to fame with "Creep". Yorke said, "We just came up too fast."[32]
In "Fake Plastic Trees", Yorke laments the effects of consumerism on modern relationships.[31] It was inspired by the commercial development of Canary Wharf and a performance by Jeff Buckley, who inspired Yorke to use falsetto.[33][34] Sasha Frere-Jones compared its melody to the "second theme of a Schubert string quartet".[35] In "Just", Jonny Greenwood plays octatonic scales that extend over four octaves,[36] influenced by the 1978 Magazine song "Shot By Both Sides".[37] With the use of a DigiTech Whammy pedal, Greenwood pitch-shifts the solo into a high, piercing frequency.[5][38] Greenwood also uses the Whammy for the opening riff of "My Iron Lung", creating a "glitchy, lo-fi" sound.[39] According to Randall, "My Iron Lung" transitions from a "jangly" opening hook to a "McCartney-esque verse melody" and "pulverising guitar explosions" in the bridge.[11]
"Sulk" was written as a response to the Hungerford massacre. It originally ended with the lyric "just shoot your gun". Yorke omitted it after the suicide of the Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in 1994, as he did not want listeners to believe it was an allusion to Cobain.[40] "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" was inspired by R.E.M. and the 1991 novel The Famished Road by Ben Okri;[41] the lyrics detail an escape from an oppressive reality.[31] The journalist Rob Sheffield described "Street Spirit", "Planet Telex" and "High and Dry" as a "big-band dystopian epic".[42]
Artwork[edit]
The Bends was the first Radiohead album with artwork by Stanley Donwood. Donwood met Yorke while they were students at the University of Exeter, and previously created artwork for the My Iron Lung EP. With Yorke, Donwood has created all of Radiohead's artwork since.[43]
For The Bends, Yorke and Donwood hired a cassette camera and filmed objects including road signs, packaging and street lights. They entered a hospital to film an iron lung, but, according to Donwood, found that iron lungs "are not very interesting to look at". Instead, they filmed a CPR mannequin, which Donwood described as having "a facial expression like that of an android discovering for the first time the sensations of ecstasy and agony, simultaneously".[44] To create the cover image, the pair displayed the footage on a television set and photographed the screen.[44]
Bibliography