Stereo Review names OK Computer a best of the month

Stereo Review's October issue makes OK Computer one of its Best of the Month records, and the cover lists it first among the month's best recordings. Ken Richardson's review, headed “Bead Your Radiohead”, names the drummer, Phil Selway, the album's MVP, the percussion that holds everything together. He also picks out Colin Greenwood's bass on “Airbag”, where Jonny Greenwood's guitar leads into Ed O'Brien's. He borrows the band's tags for the two guitars, “abusive” and “polite”.

Richardson starts from Capitol's advertising, which asks whether readers remember getting lost in an album. He argues that the album as a whole work survives in OK Computer, as it did in Abbey Road, Electric Ladyland and Wish You Were Here, though Radiohead are short of the Beatles' heights. A metal riff breaks into the nearly seven minutes of “Paranoid Android”, and “Subterranean Homesick Alien” has the kind of chorus he says U2 can no longer manage.

Set beside Pablo Honey, with its hit “Creep”, and The Bends, the new sound convinces him more and suits Thom Yorke's voice better. He reads the title as saying the people in Yorke's world are merely okay computers. His advice is to put on headphones, or lie on the floor, and let the album take over, listening for the jingle bells under the mechanical sounds of “Airbag”.