With "The Bends," they coined an honest and enjoyable alt-pop for mainstream rock palates, indebted to the Smiths and R.E.M. With "OK Computer," they took that product and adorned it with elaborate and grandiloquent arrangements, reaching what I believe is excellence in the single track "Paranoid Android." Here, they could have rested on their laurels by endlessly repeating the same album, but instead, they changed direction, giving birth to "Kid A" and "Amnesiac," and it is here that they distilled drops of magic. Underrated.
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