This time a top 50 albums of all time!
| Ok Computer | Radiohead |
| Revolver | Beatles |
| Bring it on | Gomez |
| Highway 61 Revisited | Bob Dylan |
| Green | REM |
| Closer | Joy Division |
| Power, Corruption and Lies | New Order |
| Mezzanine | Massive Attack |
| Doolittle | Pixies |
| The Joshua Tree | U2 |
| Blonde on Blonde | Bob Dylan |
| Murmur | REM |
| George Best | Wedding Present |
| Velvet Underground & Nico | Velvet Underground |
| Helplessness Blues | Fleet Foxes |
| In Rainbows | Radiohead |
| Blue Lines | Massive Attack |
| Sgt Pepper | Beatles |
| Technique | New Order |
| Unknown Pleasures | Joy Division |
| Low | David Bowie |
| The Clash | The Clash |
| Is This It? | Strokes |
| Otis Blue | Otis Redding |
| Leftism | Leftfield |
| Never Mind | Nirvana |
| Definitely Maybe | Oasis |
| Never Mind The Bollocks | Sex Pistols |
| A Grand Love Story | Kid Loco |
| I Speak Because I Can | Laura Marling |
| Funeral | Arcade Fire |
| Astral Weeks | Van Morrison |
| Club Classics Vol 1 | Soul II Soul |
| Remain in Light | Talking Heads |
| Darklands | Jesus And Mary Chain |
| Blue | Joni Mitchell |
| 3 Feet High and Rising | De La Soul |
| Stone Roses | Stone Roses |
| Screamadelica | Primal Scream |
| Computer World | Kraftwerk |
| Let England Shake | PJ Harvey |
| Three EPs | Beta Band |
| Dirtchamber Sessions | The Prodigy (Presents) |
| Kind of blue | Miles Davis |
| Entroducing | DJ Shadow |
| Fleet Foxes | Fleet Foxes |
| If I Should Fall | Pogues |
| Hunky Dory | David Bowie |
| Sounds of Silver | LCD Soundsystem |
| Lazer Guided Melodies | Spiritualized |
Living in a bachelor pad and reeling from a painful break up in a strange town and in a job I hated had given me too much time to think as well as putting me into the state of mind to view the world with a mixture of tedium and paranoia. I would observe the monotonous choreography of cars between the strip lit concrete posts of an underground carpark; observing the flickering strip lights from my solitary vantage point also reminded me of the unsettling undercurrent of pre-millennial tension: A prevailing sense of disconnection and a feeling that the millennium bug would spiral computers into logic errors that would plunge aircraft onto gridlocked motorways. The inevitable meltdown into anarchy was just a few clock cycles away.
Or maybe it was just me. Climbing the walls.
Then along came OK Computer. That an album could so eloquently express those feelings of alienation, pointlessness and futility with songs about "the panic, the vomit" and "the emptiest of feelings" made this album resonate with me quite unlike any other had before or has done since. Even the surreal imagery of "kicking, screaming, Gucci, little piggy" and "Her Hitler hairdo is making me feel ill" struck a resounding chord, an apposite backdrop to nights in the cocaine clubs of the Calls and the bargain booze binge bars of HX1.
I remember eulogising to anyone and everyone about this record with an almost religious zeal, including the poor guy in the sandwich shop! I would walk to work armed with my CD walkman, listen to it at lunchtime, walk home and then listen to it in the evening and this seemed to continue for quite a few months!
The first few bars of the syncopated drums and bass guitar of the existential Airbag are a cue to strap yourself in for the tumultuous journey ahead, from where the the record cascades into Paranoid Android starting with just a few bleeps - a song to equal the ambition of A Day in the Life with its epic changes in mood and tempo. Next up is the lush, sweeping homage to alien abduction, Subterranean Homesick Alien. Exit Music reminds me of She's Leaving Home (only much darker) and ends with the strained voice of Thom Yorke imploring that he hopes you choke. With the goose bumps inducing acoustic guitar and drums crescendo of Let Down followed by Karma Police the album doesn't let up in its magnificence.
Fitter Happier is perfectly placed on the album to break up the rich soundscape and to usher in the second half of the album, but it does so with such devastating impact: The Hawkingesque robotic voice only adds emphasis to the vacuous futility of slogan-driven, acquisitive consumerism and its dehumanising effect.
Phew, for a minute there I lost myself!
That sequence of tracks from Airbag through to Karma Police is in my opinion the best and most consistent run of form that I've ever heard on an LP and yet there is still room for Climbing the Walls, The Tourist, Lucky and No Surprises. Only Electioneering is a minor disappointment, but the highlights more than compensate for this very minor blip.
Around that time I used to say that The Bends was consistently great, but that Ok Computer reached greater highs. With hindsight, that they come so often and that the album mattered to me in a way that no other record has come close to, makes this album my all-time number one.
I also think that while I never tire of taking it for a spin it is a very much an album of the time, like Never Mind the Bollocks (gob, glue and anarchy) or Sgt Pepper (transcendental meditation, LSD and the summer of love). This is a Munchian scream into the impending millennial dystopia.
In a similar way as is levelled at Joy Division, it's just lazy to dismiss the music as "depressing". On the contrary, when you realise that other people feel the same way as you and when they give expression to those feelings with such heart-breaking AND rousing music the whole listening experience becomes one of catharsis.
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