Like the ugly duckling that turned into a swan, Radiohead have suddenly bloomed into one of this country's most magnificent bands. Initially viewed with suspicion as a possible one-hit wonder after the rogue success in America of their 1993 single, Creep, the five-man group from Oxford have never been treated on an equal footing with the much more fashionable Blur/Suede/Oasis gang. Having been ignored by the British media until their debut album, Pablo Honey, was well on its way to selling a million copies abroad, the band have had to make do, thus far, with little support and only grudging respect at home.

But that has changed with the release this week of their second album, The Bends, a sensational collection of songs which has rightly garnered glowing reviews across the board.

"We've made an album that we're really proud of, and I just feel completely vindicated," says singer and guitarist Thom Yorke in a rare burst of unabashed delight. "I feel we can do exactly what we like from now on."

As the lyricist and principal contributor to the band's five-way songwriting axis, Yorke is primarily responsible for the stirring melodies and dark, psychologically-scarred anthems which are Radiohead's stock in trade. A short, spiky-haired character with a lazy left eye and a meagre physique, his runtish appearance belies an agile mind, an iron will and a formidable store of pent-up energy. At Hallam University in Sheffield, mid-way through the band's current British tour, he wanders restlessly about the Students' Union bar area before the gig in a moth-eaten fur coat, a sort of blond, punk version of Richard III.

Very much the man with the vision thing, Yorke is the focus of the group on stage and its spokesman off. Understandably, he has come to be closely associated with Radiohead's songs, which are assumed, willy-nilly, to be the personal confessions of a deeply troubled young man "that Creep guy" as he sometimes finds himself identified in the street, particularly in America.

"Sometimes it's confessional. Sometimes it's not," Yorke says. "I probably felt like a creep when I wrote that song, but I don't think I'm a creep all the time. Actually, I think a lot of what we do is quite humorous, but nobody else on the planet seems to agree. Standing on a stage singing 'I want to be part of the human race'...it's got to be a bit funny, hasn't it?"

In most descriptions of Yorke's lyrics, there are several words which crop up a good deal more often than "humorous"; top of the list in recent weeks have been "self-loathing", "angst" and "despair".

"If I'm happy I don't usually write," Yorke allows, warily. "I'm happy after I write. There's an enormous sense of release. But I don't feel that we have to carry on churning out songs that are all about desperate human beings at the end of their tether la-la-la. That's all a bit old and boring now. It's a fine line between writing something with genuine emotional impact and turning into little idiots feeling sorry for ourselves and playing stadium rock."

Yorke and the other members of Radiohead Ed O'Brien (guitar/vocals), Phil Selway (drums) Jon Greenwood (guitar/keyboards) and his brother Colin Greenwood (bass) started the band (originally called On A Friday) while they were all at Abingdon public school in Oxford. They each went on to different universities, but managed to keep in touch, waiting until all of them, except Jon Greenwood, had completed their degrees before reconvening and turning professional.

While other former public-school rockers such as Joe Strummer and Shane MacGowan have gone to strenuous lengths to distance themselves from their backgrounds, the various members of Radiohead have made no effort to cover their tracks. Yorke is obviously a creative and highly-strung individual who would doubtless seem like an outsider no matter where he came from. But the other four are relaxed, well-spoken characters, without any of the usual downmarket rock'n'roll affectations. Rather than competing with Yorke for attention, they act as a unified support system for bringing his high-voltage ideas to earth.

They display little enthusiasm for the stereotyped role-playing that tends to go with being a rock band on the road, save for one intriguing detail. They are doing the entire tour, which takes them from Truro to Aberdeen and most points in between, without staying at hotels. This entails sleeping, indeed living, on the tour bus for two weeks, which is far from standard practice for a band at this level (even the support group, Marion, are staying in hotels).

"A lot of bands can't stand tour buses, but we're the opposite," Yorke insists, a little sheepishly. "It's that gang thing, isn't it? It's like you're going camping for two weeks. But it's on a bus. It's a bit sad really."

The show at Hallam is anything but sad. When people compare them to U2, it is not because Radiohead sound like the Irish megastars, but because their music has a similar sense of high drama and drive. They do not do anything particularly flashy, but within minutes of taking the stage they make the 950-capacity hall seem far too small to contain the sound and sheer conviction of their music.

Yorke, in particular, buries himself in his performance, singing with stark intensity in his high, pained voice. His guitar lets him down during The Bends, so he hurls it to the floor and carries on without it, twitching and jumping as if he is indeed suffering from the life-threatening effects of rapid pressure changes in the bloodstream to which the song refers.

For Yorke, the skinny kid who spent his childhood in and out of hospital, undergoing operations to correct the paralysed muscles in his almost-blind left eye, a disability for which he was teased mercilessly at school, you feel that this is more than just a job or a fantastically rewarding creative outlet.

"Being in a band is about wreaking your revenge on the world. It's like when you get chucked by your first girlfriend. You just say to yourself: I'm going to be famous one day, and then she'll regret doing that."

Radiohead's tour continues at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston (01772 201201), tomorrow; Middlesborough Town Hall (01642 242561), Sunday; Manchester University (0161-275 2930), Monday; Waterfront, Norwich (01603 766266), Wednesday; Roadmender, Northampton (01604 21408), Thursday 23; Forum, London NW5 (0171-284 2200), next Friday. The Bends is released this week on Parlophone 8 29626.