It's one in the afternoon on a cool, late-summer day in New York, and Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke and guitarist/keyboardist Jonny Greenwood are drinking coffee in the bar of the posh SoHo Grand, sleepy and subdued after another late night. Two nights ago, the band ended its month-long U.S. tour with a sold-out show that attracted the kind of celebrity-studded turnout -- Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, the Marilyn Manson boys -- reserved for only the most fashionable rock darlings.

After spending most of 1996 recording new material -- with several month-long interruptions for American and European tours -- Radiohead are drawing big names because of their recently released third album, "OK Computer." Beautiful and intricate, the record has met with almost universal critical acclaim, but it's still a tentative time for this band of five school chums from Oxford, England. Inspired by Joy Division to think of pop music as art and by U2 and R.E.M. to believe that ambitious art can move the masses, Radiohead now find themselves in the position of trying to crack America -- a feat few of their British contemporaries have managed.

Radiohead established a beachhead in the U.S. with their 1993 debut, "Pablo Honey" and its self-deprecating hit single, "Creep." Their 1995 follow-up, "The Bends," sold some 400,000 copies -- about half as many as its predecessor -- despite favorable reviews and a more ornate sound. By all accounts, "OK Computer" is the album that will either make Radiohead bona fide rock stars or forever relegate them to coulda-been-a-contender status.

What's up, then, with the prog-rock? Given the album's anthemic song structures, over-the-top guitar solos, old-school synth sounds and ethereal, layered vocals, "OK Computer" doesn't sound like anything that has topped the charts since Pink Floyd's prime.

Greenwood, his face an extreme exaggeration of Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry's already caricatured good looks, gamely admits to an interest in the genre that dare not speak its name. "I just got suspicious of everybody saying that everything recorded before 1976 and after 1971 was all awful and terrible," he says softly, obviously more comfortable when Yorke fields the questions. "I was brought up to believe that punk came along and killed off this terrible beast that had to die, but I figured there must be something to it, because those bands were so popular." Determined to form his own conclusions, Greenwood listened to the likes of Genesis, King Crimson and Pink Floyd, "though I didn't even bother with Yes, seeing as how they were met with so much derision."

And?

"It *is* all awful and terrible," Greenwood says, his brown eyes widening. "I found the one good Pink Floyd album, 'Meddle,' which is amazing, though that's supposedly the one that made Johnny Lydon say he hated them. I came out after listening to all these terrible Genesis records with the realizations that the Mellotron is a great instrument, and that you should never have a song with 'unicorn' in the title. So a few lessons were learned."

"That and that the Pixies played in lots of different time signatures and did it much better than the prog rockers," Yorke adds.

Influenced by both the Pixies *and* prog-rock, "OK Computer" features unconventional time signatures, a fair amount of Mellotron and a couple of apparent Floyd references (check the "Meddle"-like dreamy ambience of "Subterranean Homesick Alien," for one). Greenwood and Yorke also say an ideal recording situation -- producing their own album in a secluded 14th-century English mansion owned by actress Jane Seymour -- helped shape the record.

"We kind of wanted to get back to a state of where we were before we got signed, which was 4-tracking," Yorke says. "We had a more creative approach to recording then. There was none of that 'This is a science lab, and you've got to produce a product at the end of it -- and this is how much it's costing per minute.' So we were able to spend a lot of time and effort getting to a point where we felt creative."

The result is a challenging album that reveals itself with repeated listenings. Though most of the songs are dense with thick layers of sound, the album's spaciousness allows listeners to pick out meticulously arranged details, such as the sleigh bell track on "Airbag" and the squeezed, distant vocal effect on "Climbing Up the Walls." Despite Radiohead's professed distaste for Yes, the record's complexity owes at least something to that band's "Tales from Topographic Oceans."

Lyrically, the band also nods to prog-rock values. Loosely a concept album, "OK Computer" examines paranoia, despair, faith and salvation in songs about miracles and alien abductions. "The emptiest of feelings/ Sentimental drivel," Yorke sings on "Let Down." And on "No Surprises," "A heart that's full up like a landfill/ A job that slowly kills you/ Bruises that won't heal." While the album offers some hope -- "I'm on a roll this time/ I feel my luck could change," Yorke sings on "Lucky" -- it paints a generally dreary scene.

"I don't think it's pessimistic," Yorke says, politely defensive. "I put the stuff in the songs because I can't say it elsewhere. If you write it down on a sheet of paper it may sound like that, but it's actually the lyrics to a song so it's redemptive in its own way. Anyway, it's compassionate, not condemning."

Indeed, Yorke is cheerier than his lyrics might suggest, even joking about how the title of "Subterranean Homesick Alien" caused an uproar on a Bob Dylan Internet newsgroup ("How terrible!" he mock-sputters. "How dare they touch our Bobby!"). He only displays the ardor and seriousness he brings to "OK Computer" when, in the course of conversation, the word "art" comes up.

"I went to art college, but when someone says 'art' to me now I just think of all this shit down here on Spring Street in all the galleries, and to me that's not art," he says. "Pop music actually still does communicate to people directly, whereas art communicates to a select few." Visibly worked up, he continues. "Except that's not true, because most talented artists don't succeed as artists because they're not ruthless enough or they don't know the right people. So most creative people end up working in some commercial field, and therefore, by definition, a lot of what the art world dismisses as commercial work is in fact far more valid as artwork than any of the bullshit they spew on the public in most galleries."

For their part, Radiohead toe the line between art and rock with their post-punk aesthetic firmly in place. "We're very business-minded, but we're not commercially minded," Yorke explains. "All the bands we were brought up with -- the Smiths, R.E.M, U2 -- worked against the commercial thing. It's never even been an issue within the band, because ultimately, business happens after you've done the work. It's not relative to the work in any way whatsoever."

That said, there's a lot riding on Radiohead's ability to entrance America with an album that has few obviously radio-friendly hits. With "OK Computer" lagging on the album sales chart -- it debuted at No. 21 in early July but has since slid to No. 91 -- the band has scrapped its visionary but exorbitantly expensive plan to make a video for every song on the album.

"We'd be quite happy to not be in the videos, thank you very much," Yorke says. "I dunno. I just can't see the point really in having your face in everything. Besides, it's a lot of time and money, and we decided we should spend it on the next album instead."

Owing more to Joy Division than R.E.M., it's this kind of down-to-earth, D.I.Y.-influenced sentiment that's tempering Radiohead's ambitions for their next opus. "We'll use the same equipment as this time but we'll work in different locations," Yorke says.

"And we'll get some vibraphones," Greenwood adds. "I want to get some vibes."

"Do you know how much they cost?" Yorke asks.

"Thousands, probably," says Greenwood, hair hanging over his eyes. "Proper vibes are the price of a small house."

"Fuck it," says Yorke, suddenly all practicality. "You're renting 'em. We're not buying 'em, all right?"