Radiohead тобының «The Bends» альбомы

1995 studio album by Radiohead

The Bends is the second studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 13 March 1995 by Parlophone. It was produced by John Leckie, with extra production by Radiohead, Nigel Godrich and Jim Warren. The Bends combines guitar songs and ballads, with more restrained arrangements and cryptic lyrics than Radiohead's debut album, Pablo Honey (1993). Work began at RAK Studios, London, in February 1994. Tensions were high, with pressure from Parlophone to match sales of Radiohead's debut single, "Creep", and progress was slow. After an international tour in May and June, Radiohead resumed work at Abbey Road in London and the Manor in Oxfordshire. The Bends was Radiohead's first collaboration with Godrich and the cover artist Stanley Donwood, who have worked on every Radiohead album since. Several singles were released, backed by music videos: "My Iron Lung", the double A side "High and Dry / Planet Telex", "Fake Plastic Trees", "Just", and Radiohead's first top five entry on the UK Singles Chart, "Street Spirit (Fade Out)". "The Bends" was also released as a single in Ireland. A live video, Live at the Astoria, was released on VHS. Radiohead toured extensively in support of The Bends, including US tours supporting R. E. M. and Alanis Morissette. The Bends reached number four on the UK Albums Chart, but failed to build on the success of "Creep" outside the UK, reaching number 88 on the US Billboard 200. It received greater acclaim than Pablo Honey, including a nomination for Best British Album at the Brit Awards 1996, and elevated Radiohead from one hit wonders to one of the most recognised British bands. It is frequently named one of the greatest albums of all time, cited in lists including Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums and all three editions of Rolling Stone's lists of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The Bends is credited for influencing a generation of post Britpop acts, such as Coldplay, Muse and Travis. It is certified platinum in the US and quadruple platinum in the UK.

Radiohead released their debut album, Pablo Honey, in 1993. By the time they began their first US tour early that year, their debut single, "Creep", had become a hit. The band felt pressured by the success and mounting expectations. Following the tours, the singer, Thom Yorke, became ill and Radiohead cancelled an appearance at Reading Festival. He told NME: "Physically I'm completely fucked and mentally I've had enough." The guitarist Ed O'Brien later said: "After all that touring on Pablo Honey the songs that Thom was writing were so much better. Over a period of a year and a half, suddenly, bang." Kolderie credited Radiohead's Pablo Honey tours for "turning them into a tight band". For their next album, Radiohead selected the producer John Leckie, who had produced records by acts they admired, including Magazine. 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."

EMI gave Radiohead nine weeks to record the album, Work began at RAK Studios in London in February 1994. The 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 B sides. One song, "Black Star", was included on the album. The band 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 Phil and [Colin], what was the point in trying to add something more?" "The Bends", "(Nice Dream)" and "Just" were identified as potential singles and became the focus of the early sessions, which created tension. 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." According to Yorke, "We had days of painful self analysis, a total fucking meltdown for two fucking months." Yorke said: "Years of tension and not saying anything to each other, and basically all the things that had built up since we'd met each other, all came out in one day. We were spitting and fighting and crying and saying all the things that you don't want to talk about. It completely changed and we went back and did the album and it all made sense." and indie rock. The music is more eclectic than Pablo Honey; Pitchfork wrote that it contrasted warmth and tension, riffs and texture, and rock and post rock. The critic Simon Reynolds wrote that The Bends brought an "English art rock element" to the fore of Radiohead's sound. According to Kolderie, "The Bends was neither an English album nor an American album. It's an album made in the void of touring and travelling. It really had that feeling of, 'We don't live anywhere and we don't belong anywhere.'" Several songs evoke a "sense of a disintegrated or disconnected subject". The journalist Mac Randall described the lyrics as "a veritable compendium of disease, disgust and depression" that nonetheless become uplifting in the context of the "inviting" and "powerful" arrangements. In "Fake Plastic Trees", Yorke laments the effects of consumerism on modern relationships. Sasha Frere Jones compared its melody to the "second theme of a Schubert string quartet". In "Just", Jonny Greenwood plays octatonic scales that extend over four octaves, influenced by the 1978 Magazine song "Shot By Both Sides". With the use of a DigiTech Whammy pedal, Greenwood pitch shifts the solo into a high, piercing frequency. Greenwood also uses the Whammy for the opening riff of "My Iron Lung", creating a "glitchy, lo fi" sound. According to Randall, "My Iron Lung" transitions from a "jangly" opening hook to a "McCartney esque verse melody" and "pulverising guitar explosions" in the bridge. "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" was inspired by R. E. M. and the 1991 novel The Famished Road by Ben Okri; the lyrics detail an escape from an oppressive reality. For The Bends, Yorke and Donwood hired a cassette camera and filmed objects including road signs, packaging and street lights. 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 filmed 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".

All songs written by Radiohead.