It's an interesting exercise to trace back the relationship of you and certain albums that came into your life - albums that crept along the folds of space-time to impact your life in some significant way. Like a hip English teacher who really connected with you by talking to your experience or a fleeting lover that showed you the explosive, beautiful auroras in your subconsciousness weren't completely baseless, music albums can act as giant tick marks on your own personal chronology. Your perspective on such experiences may change as you grow, but you're inextricably bound to it in some way, shape or form for the rest of your life.
I can count OK Computer among the handful of albums that have majorly transformed my expectations of the art form known as music. Forget, for a moment, the onslaught of critical praise, the uniform adoration by fans. Forget the self-indulgent comparisons to 21st century alienation. Forget the solid gold statues that will inevitably be erected for this "Best Album of the '90s". Remember what it is. It is a record. It is music that Radiohead (like thousands of other artists) decided to share with the world - all in the hope that people would enjoy and absorb it as it was. Whether or not it is the "best" or "most overrated" is irrelevant. The conceptual prowess of the album seeps through, rain or shine, and you realize that the band is, at the least, saying something of significance.
My personal journey along the shifting landscapes of OK Computer is distinctly a tourist's journey. I find myself in a trolley car, alternating in speed as we move through an inverse world, completely forgotten by time. Singer Thom Yorke is the tour guide, pointing out all the amazing, horrendous and electrifying sights. "Airbag" slides along next to the trolley, bubbling up with DJ Shadow's bottles-in-a-trash bag drum line. The scene immediately gives way to "Paranoid Android," a hyper-advanced civilization in the distant background, building up and falling down in a fast-forward opera. Yorke highlights the biggest cultural phenomenon - the decadent "Gucci little piggy" at the height of it's power and the mournful chant, "God loves his children," as the crumpled aftermath ensues.
As the trolley passes a crystalline field of ruined planes, cars and trains, the glimmering notes of "Let Down" ring out, quickly undercut by a repeated message on a malfunctioning robot. "Fitter. Happier. More productive. Not drinking too much" - the automated life coach of a bygone era. "No Surprises" and "Lucky" bring the trolley back out to the expansive wastes, a spaghetti western guitar tumbling along with searing gusts of wind. And then the final stop - "The Tourist." While it is certainly a bit of ironic self-assessment, the atmosphere provided is far more prevalent. The glass guitar notes force the trolley upward into space, while Yorke frames the experience, "you ask me whether or not I'm going, at a thousand feet per second."
In all honesty, my experience with Radiohead's OK Computer has waned since our introduction. Where, at first, it was like bathing myself in profound musical goo, the album has now become more of a cherished artifact on my wall. I can still enjoy its composition and texture thoroughly, but, in terms of my personal music journey, OK Computer ended up being a gateway to better things.
No comments:
Post a Comment