The Words Are Coming Out All Weird - The Bends turns 20
Well, given the fact that it was such a landmark album and
is still referenced among longtime fans of the band as one of their best, I’m
sure there will be countless thinkpieces and retrospectives on The Bends turning 20.
Or at least there should be, anyway.
Somehow it’s managed to outlast the rest of the mid-90s
“Britpop” canon—it’s aged surprisingly well, and it’s an impressive enough
album that it sounds both fresh and energetic by today’s standards, but it also
has enough “sound of the times” running through it that putting it on today,
it’s a bit of a trip back to 1995. Certainly not as timeless or innovative as OK Computer, but then again, what could
be? But The Bends was a record that
launched numerous imitators, all of them vying to be “the next Radiohead”—it’s
the kind of album that could never be made today in an original sense, but it
is also the kind of album that could
be made today by a band citing it as a primarily influence.
The Bends contains
some of Radiohead’s still most beloved singles, including “Fake Plastic Trees,”
“Just,” and “High and Dry,” along with fan favorites like “Street Spirit,” and
“Black Star”—still one of the only songs I know that fades in at the beginning,
rather than fading out at the end. It’s an album that is not the sound of
desperation, but rather tension, and it is an album that is the sound of a band
trying to prove something; both to themselves, and to listeners—that they were
more than just a one-hit wonder, and that they had more to say than “I’m a creep.”
Disinfected, eager to please.” Yikes.
But hey those are all forgivable offenses, because of
moments like the “She looks like the real
thing” swelling in “Fake Plastic Trees,” the sneering in “Just” and “My
Iron Lung,” the somber desperation of “Black Star,” and just about every second
of “High and Dry.”
I tell people that I’ve been a fan of Radiohead since I
first heard “Creep” in the summer of 1993. And that’s true—but I was also 10.
And 10 year olds don’t make the best choices in buying music, so it took until
“High and Dry” was released as a single for me to buy not The Bends, because that would make just too much sense—but the
cassette single for “High and Dry,” which featured what was supposed to be an
acoustic version of “Fake Plastic Trees” as the B-Side. OK Computer was actually the first Radiohead album I physically
bought in July of 1997. I bought The
Bends with my Christmas money (finally) in January of 1998, followed
shortly thereafter by Pablo Honey.
It’s the kind of album, actually, that takes me back to
where I was when I first bought it—and knowing the original release date now,
it takes me back to wherever I was in March of 1995. I was e11 then. My parents
were still married, but in the process of getting a divorce. By May, I my mom
and I moved out of the house I grew up in, into an apartment.
Similarly, in January of 1998, I was 14, and my mom and I had
moved back into an almost identical
apartment after her second marriage did not work out. I was a high school
freshman, overweight, shy, struggling to find my place among my peers who were
all staring to experiment with drinking and smoking pot every weekend, and I
remember sitting in my new bedroom, the cuffs of my oversized corduroy pants
soaked from the winter snow, chain wallet dragging against my leg, listening to
The Bends on my discman.
The Bends has
carried me through over half of my life. I’ve never gotten tired of it, and my
love for it, from start to finish, has never faltered. I’ve had to buy I think
upwards of three copies of it on CD because they’ve gotten damaged and wouldn’t
play, and I own a vinyl pressing as well (the original Parlophone release, not
the Capital reissues, mind you.)
The sign of a timeless album is one that you can still put
on, even 20 years later, and find it exciting. And that’s what The Bends is for me. It’s not sonically
deep enough where I notice something new every time I hear it, but it’s an
incredibly rich, invigorating, and even a fun listen. It’s the sound of a young
band trying to leave behind what they were, but hadn’t quite found what they
would become, but were right on the cusp.
If you haven't bought a copy of The Bends in the last 20 years, what is your fucking deal?
If you haven't bought a copy of The Bends in the last 20 years, what is your fucking deal?
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