Review music - Radiohead, "OK Computer", 2009 Box Set Edition

There's little that I could add to everything that's been written in the 12 years since OK Computer, Radiohead's third and most celebrated album so far, was first released. I wouldn't hesitate to say that this is the last really important album in the history of pop-rock to this day (by "really important", I mean that it had such a profound influence this side of pop-rock that you can clearly identify a "before" and an "after" OK Computer, and that said influence is still evident more than a decade later). There is also little doubt that in it they've taken that style of music as far as it could be taken, before thoroughly smashing through that limit with their following "Kid A" and "Amnesiac". Is it their best album though? Well, you're likely to get very different answers if you were to ask fans at any of the band's concerts (and personally, I prefer both "Kid A" and "In Rainbows", which music sounds more "free" to me somehow, for lack of a better word), but the relevance of OK Computer, its seminality, cannot be disputed


I however wanted to write a few lines on EMI's latest cashcow, the 2CD + DVD pack re-release of OK Computer. Ok, in all fairness, the whole thing and its tag price (just under £13) are actually very decent, unlike their previous attempt at cashing on the band's back catalogue, namely the "Best of": if you are new to Radiohead, do yourself a favor, forget the latter and buy the former instead. Even if it only represents one chapter of their musical adventures, the addition of another CD containing most of this era's B-sides on top of the album itself (which doesn't sound like it's been "remasterized", thank you EMI!) and a DVD, reminds us of one major aspect of Radiohead's music: their albums form a whole, where the songs and their order are carefully thought through and executed, and only reveal themselves fully when listened to as such. Typically, no matter how remarkable most original B-sides titles are (with special mentions to "Meeting in The Aisle" and "How I made my Millions"), it is unthinkable to replace any song on the album itself with one of them, or add one of them to the original 12-songs listing


As for the DVD, note that the documentary "Meeting People is Easy" is not on it, despite what Amazon UK had listed for a while at their site. There is relatively little material: the video clips to "Paranoid Android", "Karma Police" and "No Surprises", as well as 3 songs performed live on Later with Jools Holland, BBC2's evening show. They could all be found elsewhere before, which is also true of the B-sides, but having them all together in a relatively small box and for a reasonable price is definitely convenient, making it a good buy for the completists, those who had some of the songs/recordings missing from their collection, as well as those new to Radiohead and who didn't have OK Computer before - for just the extra pounds/bucks/whatever your local currency is, this is definitely the edition you should go for



OK Computer [2CD + DVD] at amazon.co.uk