Radiohead are one of pop music's most gifted collectives of craftsmen — at times they create music akin to atmospheric dreams filled with Technicolor images and endless layers of subtext. While they started simply with the downbeat single "Creep," eventually they developed a three-guitar foundation that blended the best of Pink Floydian soundscapes with driving, dense pop and tales of alienation and loneliness. Their later recordings are intelligently informed by progressive jazz, classical and burbly electronic music.
Pretty much since its inception, the band's lineup has remained the same: Thom Yorke, Ed O'Brien, Jonny and Colin Greenwood, and Phil Selway knew each other as schoolmates, and formed what would become Radiohead (named after a Talking Heads song) in the mid-'80s.
Radiohead's 1993 debut Pablo Honey didn't indicate the depth and complexity they had hidden away. But The Bends (1995) and the spectacular OK Computer (1997) did, and they were catapulted from indie darlings to a band to be taken seriously.
Instead of channeling their Grammy-winning success into excess, Radiohead has remained in the margins, carefully charting their own path. They can produce decidedly non-commercial recordings (Kid A, Amnesiac) and seem disaffected by the trappings of stardom (see the band-on-the-road documentary Meeting People Is Easy). They also choose to work with other quirky talents such as director Baz Luhrmann (contributing to the film Romeo + Juliet) and graphic artist Stanley Donwood, and top-tier producers such as Nigel Godrich. In 2007, they released their seventh full-length recording, In Rainbows, first as a pay-as-you-please download, then in traditional record stores.
Provenance: Oxfordshire, England
Latest Release: In Rainbows (2007)
© 2007 Nigel Music Media LLC. Used by permission.
Radiohead
