OK Computer: The finest hour of rock's most depressed?

Ok Computer is not an easy album to review. After the successes of their first two albums, Pablo Honey and The Bends, Radiohead set out to do something totally different with this iconic third album. Steering away from the polished rock songs such as Creep, Just and Planet Telex that dominated their previous efforts, the Oxfordshire group created a polylayered collection of songs about as far from a radio friendly record as it's possible to be. Of course, it still sold millions of copies. And of course, it's still stunning.

OK Computer is the moment that Radiohead took on their status as rock's most depressed band, and you can see why from a quick glance at the cover. An abstract mix of roads, stick figures and numbers held together by freezing colours doesn't give the image of a cheerful album, and barely hidden messages such as "we hope you choke" only reinforce this feeling. Simply looking down the track list continues the impression the band hoped to give, with song titles including Paranoid Android and Climbing up the Walls staying in keeping with the album's dismal-yet-brilliant artwork. And when you stick the disc in the CD player, your nagging suspicion that this might just be the darkest piece of music you've ever come across is dramatically confirmed.

This is not an album that you listen to once before throwing in a box or on a shelf; OK Computer demands to be heard again and again and again before one can truly understand it's majesty. It wasn't until I'd listened to the whole thing six or seven times before I felt in a position to give it a fair review, it's just too confusing on first hearing. On their own, songs like the manically multi-structured Paranoid Android or the fantastic Karma Police sound great, but when they're inserted into the finished product they take on a whole new meaning, it's one of those rare records that has to be listened to all the way through to be properly enjoyed.

So let's talk a bit about the music itself. As I've said before, Radiohead went out of their way to challenge the impression that fans of the first two albums had of the band. It's fair to say that not one of the songs on OK Computer would fit into The Bends without sounding totally out of place. But what does it actually sound like? The album commands a phenomenal wealth of different musical techniques; songs like Paranoid Android regularly change, key, tempo and lyrical subject matter without skipping a beat, while synthesisers and sampling plays a massively important role in some of the album's later tracks. Electronic and more traditional styles merge brilliantly on almost all the songs, and lyrically this is Radiohead at their most bleak and surreal, with such gems as "unborn chicken voices in my head" providing an image of a band at their most bizarre. One aspect unites OK Computer: it is all phenomenally depressing. Powerfully, remarkably depressing. Not one upbeat or uplifting melody is to be found in any song here, it's an incredibly dark album. Just listen to Exit Music (for a Film) and you'll get the picture. However, rather than making the record impossible to listen to, this theme instead unites the music, sublimely tying OK Computer's tracklist together. 

So OK Computer is Radiohead's darkest, and possibly strongest album to date, but as I write this review I'm not listening to it. After several days of playing the record on repeat, I'm taking a break and listening to The Stranglers, a band so grotesquely mindless that even The Sex Pistols would have scoffed. Yes, OK Computer is brilliant, one of the greatest albums ever made, a legendary musical achievement. But you can have too much of a good thing.

10/10