The Bends
Radiohead (1995)
The second studio album from Radiohead is turning thirty years old today. This is an album that I was a little late in discovering. I had their first album and I enjoyed it, but the band kind of fell off of my radar until their third album, Ok Computer was released in 1997. That one became an instant favorite that I listened to on my drive to work every night for months, and it inspired me to circle back to discover The Bends, which I fell in love with almost (but not quite) as much as Ok Computer. This may come across like I'm damning it with faint praise, but I don't mean it like that. If Ok Computer is a five star record, The Bends is four and three quarters.
This album also introduced the world to a song with one of the trippiest music videos of the 90's.
Her green plastic watering canFor her fake Chinese rubber plantIn a fake plastic EarthThat she bought from a rubber manIn a town full of rubber plansTo get rid of itselfIt wears her outShe lives with a broken manA cracked polystyrene manWho just crumbles and burnsHe used to do surgeryFor girls in the eightiesBut gravity always winsIt wears him outShe looks like the real thingShe tastes like the real thingMy fake plastic loveBut I can't help the feelingI could blow through the ceilingIf I just turn and runIt wears me outIf I could be who you wantedAll the time
