Radiohead
Ok Computer

THE REVIEW

In the "pompous blowhards" section of alternative rock, few occupy as vast a space as Radiohead. To say nothing of their "mature" works (a mixed rip-off spanning the Aphex Twin-Autechre-Mercury Rev axis), the self-indulgent and pretentious peak of the five Oxfordians is certainly that unbearable fake rock opera known as "OK Computer".
We've heard many idiocies about this album, but it’s time, in a Fantozzi-like manner, to say it: "Ok Computer" is a colossal load of crap. It's based on trite and clichéd sounds, there's not a single decent song among the 12 tracks, and—mortal sin—the whole thing is shrouded in a nauseating anxiety, making one long for Marco Masini's early albums.
Let's see what the album has in store. It opens with "Airbag": gloomy atmospheres—the usual recycled new wave—vocals already unbearably over-the-top in describing woes no one gives a damn about.
Then we get to "Paranoid Android", dubbed by many as a new "Strawberry Fields Forever". Never was a statement more blasphemous! In 6 minutes, Radiohead manage to showcase a fantastic gallery of horrors: Morricone-like arrangements from a Portuguese B-movie, Yorke's usual laments reminiscent of my cat trapped in a washing machine, and horrid, putrid guitar solos that make the ones by The Darkness guy sound as innovative as Hendrix's in his time.
"Subterranean Homesick Alien" is relatively harmless, but the effect is lethal because just when you think something better might come along, Yorke strikes with his fatal blow. The dreaded "Exit Music", where our Maria De Filippi lookalike (who, however, is more masculine than him) screeches like a Brazilian streetwalker in heat (yet everyone always talks about Yorke's angst, go figure...) on a text so banal that it makes the authors of "Amici" seem like modern-day Harold Pinters.
Then come "Let Down", with its honeyed, mumbled arpeggios, and the soporific "Karma Police". There's even the experimental track "Fitter Happier", because you know, Radiohead are bold experimenters and then—damn it—doesn’t this album represent the dawn of the computer age???
The closing tracks—amidst our pre-agonic spasms—serve up the usual recipe, turning out particularly pathetic in "Lucky" and "The Tourist", although in the latter we like to think that the recipient of the "Slow idiot, slow down" is Yorke himself, or that imbecile who plays the guitar with a tuft like Cameron Diaz in "There's Something About Mary". The only exception in this disaster of an album is the fabulous "No Surprises": a "magnificent candlelit ballad" on a "superb velvet melody," as the good rock critics say. Memorable only for the video clip, however: every time MTV plays it, we always hope that Yorke really drowns.