The Bends (album)

After Radiohead finished recording their debut album Pablo Honey (1993), songwriter Thom Yorke played co-producer Paul Q Kolderie a demo tape of new material with the working title The Benz. Kolderie was shocked to discover the songs were "all better than anything on Pablo Honey".[3]

By the time Radiohead began their first US tour in early 1993, their debut single "Creep" had become a hit.[4] Tensions were high, as the band felt smothered by the success and mounting expectations.[5] Following a gruelling tour, they cancelled an appearance at Reading Festival after Yorke became ill; he told the NME, "Physically I'm completely fucked and mentally I've had enough."[3] According to some reports, Radiohead's record company EMI gave them six months to "get sorted" or be dropped. A&R head Keith Wozencroft denied this, saying: “Experimental rock music was getting played and had commercial potential. People voice different paranoias, but for the label [Radiohead] were developing brilliantly from Pablo Honey."[3]

For their next album, Radiohead selected producer John Leckie, admiring his work with Magazine.[3] EMI instructed Leckie to deliver a followup to "Creep" for the American market. However, according to Leckie, Radiohead had disowned "Creep" and did not "think in terms of making hit singles".[3] Recording was postponed so Leckie could work on the upcoming album Carnival of Light, by another Oxford band, Ride.[6] Radiohead used the extra time to rehearse their new material. Yorke said: "We had all of these songs and we really liked them, but we knew them almost too well ... so we had to sort of learn to like them again before we could record them, which is odd."[7]

Nigel Godrich worked as an engineer on The Bends, and produced one track, "Black Star". Godrich has produced all of Radiohead's subsequent albums.

Work began at RAK Studios in London on February 1994.[8] EMI gave the group nine weeks to record the album,[9] planning to release it in October 1994.[10] The band praised Leckie for demystifying the studio environment: "He didn't treat us like he had some kind of witchcraft that only he understands," said guitarist Jonny Greenwood. "There's no mystery to it, which is so refreshing."[11] Yorke would arrive at the studio early and work alone at the piano; according to Leckie, "New songs were pouring out of him."[9]

"Sulk", "The Bends", "Nice Dream" and "Just" were identified as potential singles and became the focus of the early sessions.[12] Tensions grew as the deadline approached; Leckie recalled: "We had to give those absolute attention, make them amazing, instant smash hits, number one in America. Everyone was pulling their hair out saying, 'It's not good enough!' We were trying too hard."[12] Yorke in particular struggled with the pressure, and the band's co-manager Chris Hufford considered quitting, citing Yorke's "mistrust of everybody".[12] Greenwood spent days testing new guitar equipment, searching for a distinctive sound, before reverting to his Telecaster.[12][13] "We had days of painful self-analysis, a total fucking meltdown for two fucking months," said Yorke.[10]

With the October deadline abandoned, recording paused in May and June while Radiohead toured Europe, Japan and Australasia.[10] Their performance at the London Astoria was released in March 1995 as Live at the Astoria, with versions of future Bends tracks including "Fake Plastic Trees", "Black Star", "My Iron Lung", and "Street Spirit (Fade Out)".[14] The tour gave them a new sense of purpose, and their relationships improved; Hufford encouraged them to make the album they wanted, instead of worrying about "product and units".[12] In July, work on the album resumed for two weeks at the Manor studio in Oxfordshire, where Radiohead completed songs including "Bones," “Sulk” and "The Bends".[12] Recording ended in November 1995[10] at Abbey Road Studios in London, where Leckie also mixed some of the songs.[15]

With deadlines approaching, EMI grew concerned that Leckie was taking too long to mix the album; without his knowledge, they sent tracks to Pablo Honey producers Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie to mix instead. Leckie disliked their mixes, finding them "brash", but said: "I went through a bit of trauma at the time, but maybe they chose the best thing." Only three of Leckie's mixes were used on the album.[9]

The Bends sessions saw Radiohead's first collaboration with their future producer Nigel Godrich, who engineered the RAK sessions. When Leckie left the studio to attend a social engagement, Godrich and the band stayed to record songs for B-sides; one, "Black Star", was included on the album.[10]

Whereas Yorke had written most of Radiohead's early songs, The Bends saw greater collaboration. "Nice Dream" began as a simple four-chord song by Yorke, but was expanded with extra parts by guitarists Ed O'Brien and Greenwood. Much of "Just" was written by Greenwood, who, according to Yorke, "was trying to get as many chords as he could into a song".[10] Whereas on Pablo Honey, all three guitarists had often played identical parts, creating a "dense, fuzzy wall",[10] their Bends roles were more divided: Yorke generally played rhythm, Greenwood lead, and O'Brien effects.[10] They also created more restrained arrangements; in O'Brien's words, "We were very aware of something on The Bends that we weren’t aware of on Pablo Honey… If it sounded really great with Thom playing acoustic with [drummer Philip Selway] and [bassist Colin Geenwood], what was the point in trying to add something more?"[10]

"Planet Telex" began with a drum loop taken from another song, the B-side "Killer Cars", and was written and recorded in a single evening at RAK. "My Iron Lung" was taken from Radiohead's performance at the London Astoria, with Yorke's vocals replaced and the audience removed.[11] According to Leckie, "Considering it was recorded in the back of a truck outside the hall — not the best sound to get something from — we did quite well."[16] "High and Dry" preceded the album sessions; it was recorded in 1993 at Courtyard Studios by Radiohead's live sound engineer, Jim Warren.[10] Yorke later said it was a "very bad" song that EMI had pressured him into releasing.[17]

The Bends has been described as an alternative rock,[18] Britpop,[19][20] indie rock[21] and post-grunge album.[22] According to the band, the album marked the start of a gradual turn in Yorke's songwriting from personal angst to the more cryptic lyrics and social and global themes that would come to dominate their later work. Most of the album was seen to continue the lyrical concerns of Pablo Honey, although in more mature fashion. The songs "My Iron Lung" and "Bullet Proof..I Wish I Was" have been compared to the band's later work, namely "Paranoid Android" and "Subterranean Homesick Alien", respectively.[23] "Fake Plastic Trees" was partly inspired by the commercial development of Canary Wharf,[24] while "Sulk" was written as a response to the Hungerford massacre.[25] According to Yorke, "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" was inspired by the book The Famished Road by Ben Okri and the music of R.E.M.[26]

The Bends was the first Radiohead album with artwork by Stanley Donwood, who has created all of Radiohead's artwork since. Yorke and Donwood hired a cassette camera and filmed objects including road signs, packaging, and street lights. Inspired by the track "My Iron Lung", they entered a hospital to film an iron lung, but, according to Donwood, found that iron lungs "are not very interesting to look at". Instead, they used footage of a CPR mannequin, which Donwood described as having "a facial expression like that of an android discovering for the first time the sensations of ecstasy and agony, simultaneously". To create the cover image, the pair displayed the footage on a television set and photographed the screen.[27]

In the UK, The Bends reached number four, stayed on the chart for 160 weeks[28] and was certified Triple Platinum in the UK.[29] Acts including Garbage, R.E.M. and k.d. lang began to cite Radiohead as a favourite band.[30]

In the US, the American lead single "Fake Plastic Trees" fared relatively well, peaking at number 11 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks and number 65 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart, the album received an initially lukewarm commercial reception, entering at the very bottom of the Billboard 200 in the week of 13 May 1995,[31] before peaking at number 147 in the week of 24 June[32] and dropping off the chart after a mere nine weeks. However, the album's reputation steadily built Stateside as the band opened for R.E.M. and Alanis Morissette. Much-talked about videos for singles "Just" and "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" drew attention, before the release of "High and Dry" (the album's original UK lead single) in early 1996 – with a new, Quentin Tarantino-styled music video – reignited interest in the album. "High and Dry" reached number 78 on the Billboard Hot 100, one of their highest chartings there,[2] while The Bends re-entered the Billboard chart in the week of 17 February 1996.[33] It eventually broke the Top 100 and peaked at number 88 on 20 April,[34] almost exactly a year after its release, and was certified Gold by the RIAA for sales of half a million copies on April 4.[35] The Bends remains Radiohead's lowest-charting album in the US but eventually turned platinum.[36] By the end of 1996, worldwide sales were around 2 million.[37]

Professional ratings

Contemporary reviews
Review scores
Source	Rating
Chicago Tribune	[38]
Entertainment Weekly	B+[39]
The Guardian	[40]
Los Angeles Times	[41]
NME	9/10[21]
Q	[42]
Rolling Stone	[43]
Select	4/5[44]
Spin	5/10[45]
The Village Voice	C[46]

The Bends received critical acclaim in the United Kingdom.[47] In her Guardian review, Caroline Sullivan wrote that Radiohead had "transformed themselves from nondescript guitar-beaters to potential arena-fillers ... the grandeur may eventually pall, as it has with U2, but it's been years since big bumptious rock sounded this emotional."[40] Dave Morrison of Select wrote that the album "captures and clarifies a much wider trawl of moods than Pablo Honey" and praised the band as "one of the UK's big league, big-rock assets."[44] Q described The Bends as a "powerful, bruised, majestically desperate record of frighteningly good songs",[42] while the NME's Mark Sutherland hailed it as a "classic" and "the consummate, all-encompassing, continent-straddling '90s rock record".[21]

Critical reception in the United States was mixed. Chuck Eddy of Spin magazine was unimpressed, deeming much of the album "nodded-out nonsense mumble, not enough concrete emotion",[45] while Kevin McKeough from the Chicago Tribune panned Yorke's lyrics as "self-absorbed" and the music as overblown and pretentious.[38] Village Voice critic Robert Christgau felt the guitar parts and expressions of angst come skillfully and naturally to the band but nonetheless lack depth: "The words achieve precisely the same pitch of aesthetic necessity as the music, which is none at all."[46] A positive review in the American press came from the Los Angeles Times' Sandy Morris, who described Yorke as "almost as enticingly enigmatic as Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, though of a more delicate constitution".[41]

Professional ratings

Retrospective reviews
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[48]
The A.V. Club	A[49]
Blender	[50]
Christgau's Consumer Guide	C[51]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[52]
Entertainment Weekly	A[53]
Pitchfork	10/10[54]
Q	[55]
Rolling Stone	[56]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[57]
Uncut	[58]

In 1997, Jonny Greenwood said The Bends had been a "turning point" for Radiohead: "It started appearing in people's [best of] polls for the end of the year. That's when it started to feel like we made the right choice about being a band."[59] Guardian journalist Caroline Sullivan wrote that it elevated Radiohead from "indie one-hit-wonderville into the premier league of respected British rock bands".[60] The success gave Radiohead the confidence to self-produce their next album, OK Computer (1997).[61]

The Bends influenced a generation of British pop acts, including Coldplay, Keane, James Blunt[20] and Travis.[20] in 2006, The Observer listed it as one of "the 50 albums that changed music", saying that it had popularised an "angst-laden falsetto ... a thoughtful opposite to the chest-beating lad-rock personified by Oasis" and which "eventually coalesced into an entire decade of sound".[62]

In 2017, Pitchfork named The Bends the third greatest Britpop album.[20] Although Radiohead were not associated with the Britpop movement,[19] Pitchfork characterised The Bends as "the vent through which its subconscious fumed" whose "epic portrayal of drift and disenchantment secures its reluctant spot in Britpop's pantheon".[20] Pitchfork credited songs as such as "High and Dry" and "Fake Plastic Trees" for anticipating the "airbrushed" post-Britpop of Coldplay and Travis.[20]

In 2000, Virgin's "Top 1000 Albums of All Time" ranked The Bends at number two, second only to Revolver by the Beatles.[63] The Bends took second place behind OK Computer in both 1998 and 2006 reader polls in Q magazine for the best album of all time.[64][65] The album was also included in the 2005 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[66] It appears at number 110 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and 111 in a 2012 revised list.[67] The Bends was the highest of three Radiohead albums to make the list (OK Computer and Kid A being the others), until an updated list in 2012, in which Kid A moved to number 67.[68] In 2006, British Hit Singles & Albums and NME organised a poll in which 40,000 people worldwide voted for the 100 best albums; The Bends placed at number 10.[69] Paste ranked it 11th on a list of the greatest albums of the 1990s.[70]

All tracks are written by Radiohead.

All personnel adapted from the album's liner notes.[74]

• Album online on Spotify, a music streaming service