Radiohead
My Iron Lung

THE REVIEW

"Pablo Honey" (1993), for many, was a pleasant surprise. Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar), Colin Greenwood (bass), Ed O'Brien (guitar), and Phil Selway (drums), from Oxford, had piqued the interest of many music lovers in search of new introspections and new musical horizons. They debut dreaming of REM, but their debt to U2 is undeniable: yet, Radiohead are neither clones nor photocopies. They are four talented musicians capable, as a first album, of producing a record that is not perfect but still very enjoyable like "Pablo Honey".

The big hit, the one that would make them international stars, is "The Bends" (1995), followed by the epochal "OK Computer" (1997). Few, however, (and often even the most attentive discographies do not include it) remember the EP that Radiohead composed after "Pablo Honey" and "The Bends". "My Iron Lung" (1994), is still today, for many, a phantom record. And, to be honest, if we really want to, it's not something to tear one's clothes over if one never had the chance to listen to it, also because, perhaps, it is the worst record of Radiohead's entire career. "My Iron Lung" is a very curious mini-album containing, upon closer inspection, only one track worthy of note, "Lozenge of Love", a sort of innovative ballad very similar to those of Nick Drake. That's all, even though the piece is truly excellent. The acoustic version of "Creep" is not bad either (but it's anything but exhilarating, even though technically it's worth a lot), and a couple of tracks that are somewhat banal, "The Trickster", a violent and obsessive track, perhaps too obsessive, and "You Never Wash Up After Yourself", a track very similar, at least according to many critics, to a lullaby.

The album came out in stores, especially in Europe, in a quick and painless manner, and it was an inconsiderate public (and critical) failure, reevaluated, but not, as often happens, excessively, only in more recent times, thanks also to the incredible success of "OK Computer", and today it is very difficult to find it commercially (easily found only on www.amazon.com at often prohibitive prices). But, as I said at the beginning, there's no need to regret this failure: Radiohead's career is rich with fascinating and gigantic albums (besides the already mentioned "OK Computer", it would be a crime not to mention the equally excellent "Kid A", 2000), and after all, this "My Iron Lung" is only a disappointing musical search that Radiohead had the chance to experiment with before creating masterpieces of much considerable scope.

A curiosity: Thom Yorke's voice, which many detest, (and which instead, according to me, is truly beautiful and unsettling) here is really awful, but this issue of singers' changing voices is an old problem, as old as the world, listen to some Bob Dylan records, his nasal voice often seems particularly excellent, other times it appears confused and blatantly out of tune ("Under the Red Sky" is the best example).