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.