Month: February 2025

We don’t want the loonies taking over – Five from Radiohead

/ Tony / 2 Comments

Another brief deviation from Springsteen…. having spent a couple of days out and about last week including a day revisiting Oxford, I thought it fitting to put together a few of my favourite songs from that city’s most famous – though of course, not its only – bands: Radiohead. Having already pontificated about OK Computer plenty of times here, I’m putting this one together in Hard Mode* and not including anything from their finest.

Blow Out

Holy crap, a song from Pablo Honey that isn’t ‘Creep’?! Yup. While their first album wasn’t that strong a clue as to what they were capable of there are a few songs on it that really come together – the ever over-played ‘Creep’ being on of them, ‘Anyone Can Play Guitar’ and this track which I’m particularly fond of for its sheer volume and wall of guitar moments.

Fake Plastic Trees

The massive fucking leap to The Bends is amazing. This album is so far away from Pablo Honey it’s almost a different band. This song in particular is a highlight for me – one that initially gave the band trouble recording. Having started life as a “joke that wasn’t really a joke, a very lonely, drunken evening and, well, a breakdown of sorts” and dealing with label pressure to follow up ‘Creep’, there was a ‘November Rain’ style, pompous version of it and then the band took a night off and saw Jeff Buckley performing alone at The Garage in London and Thom Yorke found the ‘key’ to unlock the arrangement, sang alone and played acoustic alone, collapsed into tears and the band recorded their parts over Yorke’s performance.

The Trickster

My Iron Long EP should really be considered a mini-album. I remember grabbing this in eagerness after OK Computer lead me to The Bends and being astonished that these were basically scraps from that album’s sessions. They really were on a tear and ‘The Trickster’ feels like it could fit on either The Bends or OK Computer.

Go To Sleep  (“Little Man Being Erased.”)

Hail To The Thief is one of those albums that seems to get overlooked. I can see why – it falls after the sonic experimentations of Kid A and Amnesiac and before the pricing and release experimentation of In Rainbows. It’s also a bit on the long side (their longest to date). This, their last for EMI, was billed as a ‘return’ to a more traditional sound at the time but it’s probably fairer to say that while it’s got enough of guitars that sound like guitars etc, it’s still got enough experimental bite to feel like forward momentum and it’s grown on me more as years go by.

Weird Fishes / Arpeggi

Cutting away all the hype and debate surrounding the pay-what-you-want method of release In Rainbows is one of Radiohead’s finest albums. There’s nothing on here I skip. It feels like a real song-oriented album for the first time in a while from the band, probably down to the fact that Nigel Godrich stepped in after protracted series of rudderless sessions and forced them to make decisions rather than constantly alter tracks.

*say no more, squire.

Least and Most: Working on a Dream

/ Tony / 2 Comments

Coming in hot off the back of writing for Magic, Springsteen dropped Working On A Dream a little over a year after that album – his shortest gap between albums for some time. ‘What Love Can Do’ was written toward the end of sessions for the former, but not fitting there and feeling like it was the start of something ‘else’, Brendan O’Brien encouraged Bruce to keep writing for a new album with another handful of songs arriving over the next week.

Working On A Dream is definitely a different beast to Magic. While there Springsteen’s approach to recording with O’Brien and the E Street Band – working with a core group of himself, Max Weinberg, Gary Tallent and Roy Bittan and with additional parts added on later – worked for the leaner, meaner sound that suited the theme of Magic, the songs on Working On A Dream are made for bigger stuff, a painting with more colours with Springsteen trying to use less of a ‘rock’ voice and while the E Street Band could make these songs sound as huge as they presumably were in the Boss’s head, the process here means that band has never sounded quite so constrained and tiny.

Least: Queen of the Supermarket

Not only does this song emphasis the above points of production flaws – all the tacked on layers sound too much like veneer when a big, unbridled band sound could’ve made it soar – it’s just a naff song: our hero has literally gone from singing songs of chrome-wheeled, fuel injected love with Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor to actually singing about pushing a fucking shopping cart and finding “a dream (that) awaits in aisle number two.” FFS, Bruce. And someone had the bright idea of having the fucking barcode scanner ‘bleeps’ in the fade out. Thunder Road has been swapped for a fucking Sainsburys.

Best: My Lucky Day

My Lucky Day is a relatively fast, blistering tune that sounds like a blast was had recording it. Plus, in the context of this album, its fast, rawer sound – at odds with the layers of overdubs etc that blight the aimed-for sound that drapes so much of the album – means its one of the songs on Working On A Dream that works from a production / sound perspective. It’s also surprisingly – given its faster tempo – a wonderful little love song complete with both a guitar and sax solo.

Least and Most: Magic

/ Tony / 6 Comments

There’s little competition for Magic as Springsteen’s finest ‘post reunion’ albums, in my opinion at least. Yes, The Rising has the joy of a rekindled E Street Band and more than many an album’s share of good tunes but Magic is the album that captures the sense of an artist and band now confident in their ‘second wind’ and an established relationship with produce Brendan O’Brien working at strength.

The other element that sells it for me is that while some dismissed this album as ‘just another collection of songs’ these songs are all tied together with a sense of foreboding, a distaste and often anger at the then-current state of America (which probably seem like the halcyon days now) with lines like “Who’ll be the last to die for a mistake/Whose blood will spill, whose heart will break” or “tell me is that rolling thunder or just the sinking sound of something righteous going under” – all backed by the muscular heft of the E Street Band.

Least: Girls In Their Summer Clothes

I know this is probably among the least popular of my ‘least’ takes – at least considering it’s the second most streamed track on the album by a long way – but there’s something about ‘Girls In Their Summer Clothes’ that’s just never sat right with me. It feels too stodgy to be the lighter ‘fun’ song on the album -like ‘Mary’s Place’ or ‘Waitin’ On A Sunny Day’ on The Rising – and Springsteen’s vocal take sounds surprisingly flat or almost disinterested… with a little less heavy a sound it would probably fit better on Springsteen’s next album. Which in itself isn’t a good thing either…

Most: Gypsy Biker

In which Springsteen takes his Vietnam-vet song ‘Shut Out The Light’s “Bobby pulled his Ford out of the garage and they polished up the chrome” line and updates it for a more modern war. In keeping with the heavier-hitting bitterness with which Magic bristles against the decisions of the US, this time instead of the relief of “I’m so glad to have you back with me,” it’s a coffin that’s come home and the cycle is being pulled from the garage to be burnt in the foothills with the kiss-off ” now all that remains is my love for you brother, lying still and unchanged. To them that threw you away, you ain’t nothin’ but gone.”