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.”

 It conjures up a time when Thom Yorke was still writing lyrics that were easier to identify with—not so much about isolation, technology, ambiguity, etc. And oh sure, some of the are a little cringe worthy 20 years later—like the “’talkin’ to my girlfriend and waiting for something to happen,” on “The Bends” and the questionable line in “Sulk”: “You are so pretty when you're on your knees/

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?