I saw four girls at Menagerie Coffee the other day, and while they'd arrived together, each was talking to someone else at another location on the planet via their phones, or Tweeting or Snapping – what was the point of their entourage? Why were they there together? Did one of them drive? Were they friends at all? Tom Yorke predicted this kind of disassociation nearly 20 years ago.
Heavily inspired by the avant-garde, linguist-guru Noam Chomsky and the underbelly of science, OK
Computer's themes include 21st century technology, insanity, modern life,
capitalism and the ghosts in the machine. Remember when the computers took over
in "Karn Evil 9"? This time it's happening for real, without the B-Movie shtick.
It's both frightening and soothing at the same time, like we've all been given
Soma and are ultimately aware of our fate, but la-de-da, we plain don't care.
Thom Yorke's take is less nihilistic. Indeed he states that the inspiration for
the LP was The Beatles' "A Day in the Life." That's odd to me, as I've never
really looked at The Beatles' opus as particularly nihilistic; merely indeed, a
day in the life. More Vonnegut "Ho-hum" than Chomsky pessimism. This is big
conceptual music nonetheless (but I will stick to my guns: the overarching theme here is the loss of
humanity).
It's interesting that OK Computer is an LP that one can
speak of conceptually for hours on end, never once contemplating the music
itself. With that in mind: In 1811, Ned Ludd sent intimidating letters to textile
firms in Nottingham, England implying that machines were taking over the tasks
typically handled by craftsmen. The workers feared that the
increasing industrialization of British factories foreshadowed an end to their
livelihood. Incensed, they took matters into their own hands and called themselves "Luddites." Today, the moniker is applied to anyone who
resists technology's advance. OK Computer is infected with Luddism - not worker
angst, but human and ethical alienation in the computer age. From the first
track on, the album takes ironic jabs at technology by embracing it and
impersonating its sounds. In doing so it speaks volumes about the excesses of
modern technology and how our inventions tend to threaten our essential
humanity. The album has a visceral quality that imbues the listener with the
feelings of a person crumbling beneath the weight of too much input and too
many demands: the monotony of airplanes, parking lots,
freeways, antibiotics, airbags, treadmills, fridges buzzing, carbon monoxide, landfills, pumpkin spice; the stuff killing who we are. OK Computer taps into
something distinctly unique to the post-modern condition.
There's a feeling of the end of the world on this album - not an end of life, just an end of the world as we know it (and btw, I dont feel
so fine). Whether given a second chance by an airbag, or lifted by aliens away
from this horrible mess, it's all beautiful despair. Filled with relentless
ambition, the LP soars with the dynamic "Paranoid Android" and pays
homage to Bob Dylan with "Subterranean Homesick Alien." The high point is "Let Down," on
which Thom Yorke sounds as if angels were carrying him through an emotional
odyssey. "Karma Police" is near perfection, and with songs like
"The Tourist," "Exit Music (For A Film)" and "No
Surprises," OK Computer shines as a brilliant example of what good this
often-tragic modern world has to offer: great art through emotional torment and
disaffection, Radiohead-style; like a new Renaissance.
In media there are those big films, big LPs, colossal moments when what is created is far more lush and dense, smarter, more encompassing than anything else of its time. Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity's Rainbow comes to mind. Lars VonTrier's Melancholia as well. There are those humans who in their creativity are ions ahead of the rest of us. Thom Yorke, particularly here on OK Computer, is one of those demigods. Yorke perfectly captured modern day anxiety at the time, Interestingly though, looking back on the 90s, I question anxiety in the pre-Homeland Security, pre-Global Warming, pre-clowns in the woods era; a time with an economy unsurpassed in the century, in a nation unsullied by war. Sissies! Serves to show the ahead-of-its-time nature of one of the greatest LPs ever recorded.
