REVIEW
OK COMPUTER
Radiohead Foresaw the Future: Ours
Bruno Garza Pérez and Francisco Guerrero Lira
I wrote a glowingly positive review for this album, and then the browser froze, locked me out, and the review was lost. I'm still irritated at having to redo everything. Despite this, it's almost horrifyingly fitting. Because that is what OK Computer is "about." Everything came true. Capitalism's tech rulers have relentlessly nurtured a workforce and client base of wish-they-were-androids twenty years after Radiohead released "OK Computer." They are committed to maximizing efficiency by using algorithms that relentlessly collect data from every available metric, and they find no advantage in human downtime, imperfection, or ideals. Radiohead foresaw that in "OK Computer," among all the other loneliness and weariness that its songs would enfold in melody and sound.
"OK Computer: OKNOTOK 1997 2017," the album's most recent reissue, remasters the original CD as well as eight new songs that were B-sides on EPs in the 1990s and were rereleased in 2015 on a "Collector's Edition" of "OK Computer." (The remasters provide some fresh glints of clarity and sparkle, especially on guitar sounds, but they aren't noticeably different from previous versions.) Meanwhile, "OKNOTOK" includes what the band calls "original studio recordings" of "'OK Computer'-era tracks" of three songs previously performed by Radiohead in the 1990s: "I Promise," "Lift," and "Man of War." They are completely in sync with the vibe. "I Promise" is a list of dismal promises not to go away, "even after the ship is ruined," set to a steady march; its video clip depicts a forlorn guy on a bus, later revealed to be an android head. "Lift" combines an expansive melody with environmental omens: "the fragrance of air conditioning/the fish are belly up." And "Man of War" conjures up images of isolation and ruin, with sinking notes and a gloomy yet exciting crescendo. Why did these completed recordings take 20 years to be released? Only Radiohead is aware.
The album ponders on the ways in which individuality can be strangled or surrendered, and weighs on the frailty of the body versus the power of machines
Radiohead's debut album, released in 1993, was depressive, but in 1997, "OK Computer" carried the band's worldview toward something representing a concept album, pondering the ways in which individuality can be strangled or surrendered, and weighing the frailty of the body versus the power of machines. Although "OK Computer" foretold government compulsion (as in "Karma Police" and "Electioneering") rather than the compulsive enticements of search engines and social media, Radiohead predicted the pervasiveness of both technology and the tech mind-set. The robot-voiced, tuneless protagonist of "Fitter, Happier" would surely be uploading his daily exercise data to the cloud by now.
Nonetheless, Radiohead's uneasy image of the future was constructed on a foundation of the past. After 20 years, it's evident that "OK Computer" was the album on which Radiohead most firmly embraced and faced the Beatles' legacy.
OK Computer manages to be a pop record despite the dark dreary melodies of 'Karma Police' and frightening lyrical images of 'No Surprises.' You want to sing along even though you can't understand what's being said, and that's what makes it so appealing. The sheer unpredictability and inscrutability of OK Computer still manages to surprise even 20 years later, from the wild tumult of guitars on 'Electioneering' to the beautiful vulnerability on 'Exit Music (For A Film).'