pop Cd of the week **** (excellent)

There should be a health warning printed on the sleeve: Do Not Play If You Are Feeling Fragile. Radiohead's attempt to capture the so-called "miserable human condition" in 12 songs is surprising and sometimes inspiring but its intensity makes for a demanding listen. its nerve endings are wholly exposed ("fraying like badly-wired plugs"in singer Thom Yorke's words) - even more so than on The Bends, the 1995 album that promoted them for indie one-hit-wonderville into the premier league of respected British rock bands.
Yorke claims to be much more optimistic this time around, the neuroses that spawned bends numbers like Street Spirit ("cracked eggs, dead birds / scream as they fight for life") a thing of the past. Or so he says, but it's hard to credit. Listen to his misanthropy on Fitter, Happier:"Regular exercise at the gym three days a week/fitter, happier and more productive/a pig in a cage on antibiotics" You wouldn't want to spend many midnights with OK Computer.
The title is one of the few light-hearted elements, inspired by the Japanese prediliction for juxtaposing unrelated english words. That said, while recording the last LP, Yorke couldn't have been prodded out of his self absorbtion long enough to notice said prediliction. So OK Computer can be characterised as the outward-focused successor to the introverted Bends.
The songs are arranged in a sort of cycle that insists on being heard as a whole. As such - and in the feeling that the music was worked out over a long period of leisurely experimentation - it is reminisant of, oh-gawd-no, Pink floyd's Dark side of the moon. If that album had been made in the technologically advanced, pre-millennial nineties it might have sounded a lot like OK Computer. And OK... is probably destined to be similarly recognised as one of the definitive records of its time.
The sleighbells 'n' grimy guitar (courtesy of the versitile jonny Greenwood) that open the first song, Airbag, can be taken as the post-mod equivalent of the floyd's Mellotrons and Moogs, while the three movements of the semi-acoustic and very lovely single Paranoid Android recall Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. So does Paranoid's disturbing, disturbed lyrics - but from there they are in uncharted territory.
Subterranian homesick Alein is one of several tunes whose prettiness- chiming guitar, seagull cries - belies the desolation below. This is Yorke's paean to the space aleins he believes live among us (you argue with him), and it leads to one of the album's big moments, Exit Music (for a film). It starts small and builds to a crescendo, advising a young couple to get out "before all hell breaks loose". Stunning.
The album continues inextricably through Fitter, Happier - a synthesised voice recites a list of modern imperitives ("get on better with your associate employees") - and it's only rocker, Electioneering. Just as it seems to be on the verge of collapsing under its own denseness it winds down with another highlight, the tinkly, fairytale-esque No Surprises. The tourist closes the album with wistful strummery from second guitarist Ed O'Brien, and you're left overwhelmed and possibly needing an asprin. nothing else this year is likely to match OK Computer's ambitiousness, let alone it's intensity.