Radiohead's OK Computer confounds expectations

By PAUL CANTIN Ottawa Sun August 19, 1997

Radiohead's new album, OK Computer, has emerged as one of

the most acclaimed releases of the year, but no one -- including

the band -- was anticipating a warm reception.

It's a challenging but superbly realized collection of songs

focused vaguely on the alienating effects of modern living.

Not exactly Top 40 fair, a fact exacerbated by Radiohead's

decision to release as an opening single Paranoid Android, a

meandering, seven-minute Frankenstein monster of a song,

stitched together from various musical ideas.

The group's Phil Selway says the quintet was braced for a frosty

commercial and critical greeting. So was their label, EMI-Capitol

Records.

"When we first delivered the album to Capitol, their first reaction

was, more or less, `Commercial suicide.' They weren't really into

it. At that point, we got The Fear. How is this going to be

received?" says Selway, who joins the group at the Congress

Centre tomorrow, double-billed with Scotland's Teenage Fanclub.

But Selway is generous, crediting the support OK Computer

received from the label, which launched an unorthodox advertising

campaign, taking out full-page ads in the agenda-setting British

press, featuring singer Thom Yorke's lyrics for the track Fitter

Happier writ large on a blank background.

"We weren't expecting this level of good will towards it. It has

certainly surpassed any expectations so far," he says.

"Even though I don't think the album is quite what they were

expecting ... they are looking for ways of promoting it that are

appropriate to the record."

Come on, Phil.

Isn't there a slight possibility that OK Computer is just that good,

that people are picking up on it on their own, without prodding

from critics, radio stations or ads?

"Well, hopefully," he says.

"That is the way it happened with (Radiohead's second album)

The Bends. It was a distinctly slow-burner of an album. Part of

that was because it spread by word-of-mouth. People were able

to respond to it because they thought it was good music."

Much of OK Computer was written and worked-out during

Radiohead's support slot last year on the road with Alanis

Morissette (who covered The Bends' Fake Plastic Trees early in

her own tour).

Recording took place in the rustic splendor of Bath, in a

temporary studio rigged up in the home of Dr. Quinn, Medicine

Woman, actress Jane Seymour.

"It made our performances a lot more relaxed. We tended to

clam up in conventional studios.

"I think it was sufficiently cut off for us to immerse ourselves in

the album, but not so cut off that it turned into a scene from The

Shining," he says.