My first Radiohead album! Is that a big deal? That's not a rhetorical question. Somewhere along the line I got this strange idea that Radiohead was a super big deal and a lot of people loved this band, as if they were the 90s version of... well, some big band but not among the greatest. I won't say The Beatles, because their music is so ubiquitous. Not Led Zeppelin, whose 70s dominance is well recognized. Not U2, among the most overhyped bands ever. Maybe Radiohead really was as big as those bands were in their day during the 90s and I just didn't realize it.
If that's true by listening to The Bends I can't really see why. They're a noisy alternative rock band that plays largely maudlin music. I imagine that played well in the mid-90s when people were over the coke-fueled party atmosphere of the 80s and starting to tire of the over-serious grunge movement. I also get the idea that a band that plays lots of sad-sounding music gets more of a pass than other bands who might play generic or shitty music. I think it's the idea that in music "sad-sounding" equals "beautiful" to a subset of people.
Well, maybe I'm judging Radiohead against too high a standard. Maybe they're just another band and not as revered as I thought. In any case The Bends is an OK album. I can't find anything really wrong with the music. The album sounds a bit sloppy because of the noisiness Radiohead employs. The guitars at times are distorted to almost pure static, and other songs are spoiled a bit by squeeky overdubs. What I can't really find on The Bends is any so-crazy-good-you-must-hear-this performance. It's competent at the least. 3 stars.
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