One-hit wonder.

Three words that are an anathema to any young band.

It may be tempting to put Radiohead in this category based on the runaway success of their catchy 1993 first single, Creep, whose plaintive chorus appealed to angst-ridden listeners everywhere ("You're so very special/I wish I was special/But I'm a creep").

After all, the band didn't help matters by keeping a low profile.

"We didn't tour in America at all last year - no wonder people thought we were one-hit wonders," muses the band's guitarist, Ed O'Brien. "We're all guilty of that to a certain extent. We did some shows with Beck about two or three weeks ago and the only song I'd heard, obviously, was Loser; his Loser was like our Creep. I didn't buy the album and I saw him live and he was brilliant. It's when you go see a band live, that's when you can tell if they're going to cut it or not."

And apparently Radiohead can. Asked to open for Neil Young with Pearl Jam on their European tour, the band had to turn down all but one date in order to focus on more pressing concerns - namely touring the states with one of the biggest bands in the world.

"We got wind of the fact that R.E.M. was going to invite us on the tour," Mr. O'Brien explains. "What do you think, either four weeks on our own, playing in clubs of 600 people, or with the biggest band in the world, who you're massive fans of? There's not really any question of what you're going to do. We'd have walked across America for three days and not eaten anything or drunk anything to do this tour."

Presumably R.E.M. will be kind enough to feed Radiohead - both bands perform Tuesday at Reunion Arena and Wednesday at Starplex - but the bigger favor will be giving them a chance to play songs from their haunting second album, The Bends, in front of a larger audience.

Beyond MTV's occasional showing of the visually stunning video for the first single, Fake Plastic Trees, their sophomore effort hasn't had much airplay stateside, which is a definite shame. From the moody sonic landscape of Planet Telex to the haunting Black Star, The Bends is one of those rare records: Every track is worth a listen as the band covers varying shades of modern alienation against a background that is sometimes soft and lush and sometimes coarse and metallic.

The Bends is not particularly cheery. The album has the same sense of paranoia and self-loathing that was inherent in Creep.

"It is a dark album and it would have been a lot darker if we'd released the tracks that we'd first recorded. We were going around calling it The Heavy Mother of an Album. It reflected the atmosphere in the studio as well. I wouldn't say... the songs are down, but there's a sense of liberation in songs that are melancholy that you relate to. In my teens, when I was listening nonstop to the Smiths, I thought it was quite funny and I also found it very uplifting, and I think there's definite traits of that in our music."

Unlike a lot of bands of their age and stage of success, Radiohead took time out from pursuing their dream to get their degrees. After meeting as teenagers in Oxford, Mr. O'Brien, singer Thom Yorke, drummer Phil Selway and bassist Colin Greenwood split up to attend college, reuniting on holidays to play music. Mr. Greenwood's younger brother Jonny joined the group on guitar and keyboards once the other members finished school.

"We spent maybe five or six years trying out different musical styles, rehearsing in village halls, not playing for anyone, just for ourselves and occasionally a few friends. We balanced it very well. We all wanted to go to college but yet there was a total commitment to the band. There was never a question of us really not having a go of it after college."

In light of the band's slow and steady growth, the success of Creep was the worst thing that could have happened to them.

"The whole thing about Creep was it upset our plans," he says.

"We'd always planned to have this evolution, and then by the fifth album maybe we'd have a gold record. We had a gold record on the first album - that was a bit of a shock. If you'd asked us that beforehand, we wouldn't have wanted it that way. It made the expectations a lot bigger than we wanted, and it wasn't necessarily fair.

"Suddenly the record company was, This next album, we're going to sell five million albums and you're going to be the '90s answer to Aerosmith because you guys rock!' You try to sidestep the issue and you spend three or four months in the studio rerecording songs, so any momentum being gained is completely lost." Radiohead may not be the press darlings that other recent Brit bands like Elastica and Oasis are, but that's just fine with them.

'At times, it can be a bit frustrating because you maybe feel you don't get the coverage that you deserve or merit, but I think in other ways it's good," says Mr. O'Brien. "We've always been in it for the long haul, if you like, and to be associated with any kind of a scene is something we've been keen to avoid. When people come to a Radio-head gig, it's a little bit of a secret, it's still word of mouth. I think when people come hear us live, it's like, I must tell someone,' and that's the way we've always wanted to do it."