Radiohead
Ok Computer

THE REVIEW

This strange thing, this object (or form of life) that came from who knows where... The white cover with scattered images, seemingly placed there at random, like that blurred highway or that airplane nose: a cover that, upon closer inspection, you realize is a snapshot of the 20th century, a true portrait of our time. And to think that listening to the record is like looking at that cover again... Perfect harmony between visual and sound art (because this is art). And also perfect harmony between song and song.

It took a while for these tracks to get inside me, but slowly the music hits you more and more and continues to do so infinitely, it's as if someone penetrated your brain and never stopped, a subterranean alien that kidnaps you and takes you to another planet...

After the hypnotic and spacey (spacey both in the lyrics and the music) “Airbag” opener, the heart-wrenching and schizoid “Paranoid Android” (magnificent the lament “rain down, rain down”) and the dreamy and psychedelic "Subterranean Homesick Alien”, with a tender, naive, and wonderful text, you think: “Yes, but now it seems like the level is going to drop, they can't have made other songs like this...”
Instead, you hear the acoustic guitar, so sad, the whispered voice resonating in the void... It's “Exit Music”, emotionally intense, deep, dramatic, with a splendid liberating crescendo underscored by a powerful bass line and computer distorted guitar (the background noises - people talking, seagulls at the sea - at the line “there's such a chill” and then at “we hope that you choke” are also brilliant).
Then two more pearls, “Let Down” and “Karma Police”, more melodic and perhaps for this reason underrated, or maybe I'm the one overrating them?
Excluding “Electioneering” which, musically speaking, I consider a blemish in paradise, in the second part of the album we find other masterpieces: the melancholic “Fitter Happier” (a song sung by a computer that manages to convey emotions!, no comment), a real summary of the modern world (something that reminds me of “Revolution 9” by the Beatles), the horror song “Climbing Up the Walls” (with spine-chilling final strings), opposed by the sweet “No Surprises” (whose lyrics, however, contrast with the positivity of the melody); next, we have the disconsolate “Lucky” (Thom “at his best” and guitars à la David Gilmour), where the lyrics in this case are much more optimistic than the music (see “Perfect Day” by Lou Reed), and finally, the most worthy closure that could be found, “The Tourist”, which revisits the theme of the speed of modern means from “Airbag” and “Let Down” and summarizes, in that heart-wrenching scream (does Munch ring a bell?) “slow down”, the entire album's content… Do you remember at the beginning when we talked about the highway on the cover and the correspondence between images and music?

PS: please forgive all the parentheses I've used…