![]() In a city of the future It is difficult to find a space I’m too busy to see you you’re too busy to wait. One of the B-sides, “Palo Alto,” nicely sums up the current tech-town situation: Surely the robot-voiced, tuneless protagonist of “Fitter, Happier” would now be uploading his daily exercise data to the cloud. Although “OK Computer” predicted government coercion (as in “Karma Police” and “Electioneering”) rather than the addictive enticements of search engines and social media, Radiohead thoroughly understood how pervasive both technology and the tech mind-set would become. ![]() Radiohead was depressive upon arrival, with its 1993 debut record, but in 1997 “OK Computer” carried the band’s worldview toward something like a concept album, pondering the ways that individuality can be smothered or surrendered, and considering the frailty of the body versus the power of machines. Why did these finished recordings wait 20 years for release? Only Radiohead knows. “Lift” brings an expansive melody to a foreboding consolation - “This is the place it won’t ever hurt again” - with environmental omens: “the smell of air conditioning/the fish are belly up.” And “Man of War” envisions isolation and decay, framed by descending chords and a somber yet exhilarating crescendo. “I Promise” is a list of glum commitments not to run away, “even when the ship is wrecked,” set to a steadfast march its video clip shows a forlorn guy, eventually revealed as an android head, on a bus. ![]() The album’s latest reissue, “OK Computer: OKNOTOK 1997 2017,” remasters the original CD along with eight additional songs that were B-sides on EPs in the 1990s, which were rereleased in 2015 on a “Collector’s Edition” of “OK Computer.” (The remasters find some new glimmers of clarity and sparkle, particularly on guitar sounds, but aren’t startlingly different from past versions.) Meanwhile, “OKNOTOK” adds what the band has described as the “original studio recordings” of “‘OK Computer’-era tracks” of three songs that Radiohead first performed in the 1990s: “I Promise,” “Lift” and “Man of War.” They fully share the mood. ![]()
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