Those in the Know were composing litanies of praise to Radiohead two years ago. God knows where their certainty came from: after a patchy debut album and a blockbuster of a single, Creep, those blessed with ultimate wisdom were proclaiming them genius troubadors of those Long Dark Nights of the Soul which seem to come upon us more and more as the world spins ever faster to the dull treble-nought of the year 2000.

I was not in the Know. I crossed fields at festivals to avoid Radiohead. I snurkled and smirked at Radiohead passion. I channel-surfed to avoid their regular and increasingly jaded performances of Creep on every TV pop-circus. And it seems that the only people more bored and disillusioned with Radiohead than myself were, um, Radiohead.

"There was a point where we seemed to being living out the same four-and-a-half minutes of our lives over and over again," guitarist Ed O'Brien says. "It was incredibly stultifying."

Jonny Greenwood, another Radiohead guitarist, shudders. "Doing acoustic versions of Creep for radio station jingles," he says. "Being the Creep people." He shudders again.

But what does a one-hit-wonder pop band do when its hit reaches saturation point and the public, as one, turns its head? Radiohead's two follow-up singles didn't do too well at all, and, like last week's Arsenal v Real Zaragoza Cup Winners' Cup final, it appeared to be All Over. But then, 90 seconds from the end of Radiohead's extra-time on their 15 minutes of fame, they like Nayim curled a splendour-kissed ball in from the halfway line, right over the outstretched hands of the critics, and GOAL! The Bends hit the back of the net and all those watching could scarcely believe their eyes. It was repeated again and again. Rewind, play, rewind, play ...

The Bends is easily the greatest rock album since Nevermind. It very possibly over-shadows Nevermind. If we still had things as outdated as "eras", then The Bends would define it. It claws at the skies and gets clouds caught behind its nails; it grinds its hips into the ground; it burns, it soothes, it heats the blood to 1,000 degrees and watches with delight as your veins explode. There's rarely been this much passion, this much strip-knuckled emotion in a 50-minute LP. And I used to think they were poo. I have never felt so foolish in my life.

But with this much passion on display, and for the frequently homesick-for-the-womb and sick-to-the-heart-of-touring lyrics ("Mould me/ Heat the pins/ And stab them in/ You have turned me into this/ I just wish I was bulletproof ... This machine will not communicate/ These thoughts/ And the strain I am under ... Now I can't climb the stairs/ Pieces missing everywhere Prozac/ Painkillers/ When you've got to feel it in your bones"), some have proclaimed The Bends to be the third in the triumvirate of 1990s Depression Albums, along with Manic Street Preachers' Holy Bible and Nirvana's In Utero.

It has been posited that singer Thom Yorke is manically depressedmentally fragilethe next great rock'n'roll suicide. "Nah," Yorke says, trying to rest trying to rest his elbow on the table, and missing by only a few inches. It is 2am in Rome. Radiohead's roadcrew is drinking that paint-stripper-as-a-beverage, grappa. The band is sticking to red wine. Lots of it. They don't seem like they spend their free time sobbing into handkerchiefs and staring wild-eyed at the moon. They're all university graduates. They know how to relax. They are consummate professionals. And they're all charming, funny and polite. I love polite pop-stars. Trashing a hotel room isn't rock'n'roll, it's just a pain in the arse for some maid with kids to feed.

Anyway, Radiohead aren't going to wade into the sea with rocks in their pockets. The reason why The Bends seems to chart such a wealth of emotional lows with such veracity is because we have, finally, started to breed pop-stars who don't have to live out instability and depression in order to write about it. Radiohead are, simply, musical geniuses with very good imaginations.

"Some of the press has been absurd," Yorke says. "We get people coming up to us, quoting that line 'I wish it was the Sixties/ I wish I could be happy/ I wish/ I wish/ That something would happen' (from the song The Bends). We wrote that line as a joke. We were taking the mickey. We all found that song hilarious.

"That's not to say the album's a sham I've been through some really bad times, and I wrote about them but I hate these self-pitying rock stars who run

headlong into situations that damage them, and then whine about it. I've no sympathy. It's so easy to be miserable. Being happy is tougher and cooler."

It also happens to sound marvellous on record.

The single Fake Plastic Trees is released on Monday by Parlophone. Radiohead play the Glasgow T-in-the-Park festival (Aug 5-6) and support R.E.M. on their UK dates