An intellectually fascinating, musically claustrophobic, near-masterpiece. From the severed-nerve jangle guitar turns of 'Paranoid Android' to the cynically absorbing 'Fitter Happier', "OK Computer" is a triumph of the career of one of the great 1990s alternative rock groups.
Relentlessly thought provoking, eerie and evocative, "OK Computer" opens with the droning guitar of 'Airbag', a warm-up to one of the greatest Radiohead songs: the six and a half minute 'Paranoid Android', which is, separately and all at once, vampiric, cynical, coldly angry, haunting and hypnotic. The highlights are Thom Yorke's yearning howl of "What's thaaaaaaat?" and the line 'Ambition makes you look pretty ugly/Kicking, squealing Gucci little piggy.' The violent mind flips of the instrumentals make each second memorable.
The comparisons of "OK Computer" to "The Dark Side Of The Moon'' are legitimised with the mothership calls and drowned spacey feel of 'Subterranean Homesick Alien''.
The dark, cold ''Exit Music (For A Film)'', written for Baz Lurhmann's 'Romeo + Juliet' shows, if nothing else, Radiohead's influence on later Brit alt rock. The mood and structure of those opening guitar chords have been imitated well into the 21st century, particularly on Coldplay's 2000 album ''Parachutes''.
The mysterious "Karma Police", another hit for Radiohead, is a highlight with the sprawling piano and guitar and complex, open-for-interpretation lyrics.
The robotic, cynical 'Fitter Happier', about how you'll turn into "a pig/in a cage/on antibiotics" if you try to follow the expectations that everyone has of you, is, although the simplest song on the album, an extremely accessible piece.
The slight dip after 'Fitter Happier'-'Electioneering' sounds somewhat like a preachy rant and doesn't fit the mood of the album and 'The Tourist' drags on for a minute longer than it should-costs the album a perfect mark. However, the terrifying, prisoner-of-war-torture-chamber echo of 'Climbing Up The Walls' and the lullaby guitar chime of 'No Surprises' and 'Lucky' ensure that "OK Computer" is an amazing album, and arguably the finest mood piece of the 90s.
