Bring Down the Government

  Like many people, my music-listening habits tend to go in phases, often influenced by what I come across on the radio (mainly Radio 6 or 3) or websites like Bandcamp or The Quietus, or read about in Wire magazine. I prefer that aleatory quality to it, as I do with the poems, books and authors I come across, at odd moments believing there's an underlying order or interconnectivity to my magpie-ish pecking which signals to me I'm heading in the right direction, whatever that might be.

   The last few months, for example, has seen a revisiting of Radiohead mostly sparked by a celebration of OK Computer's 25th anniversary on Radio 6.

  

Among numerous delights, 'No Surprises' shone out for me in its overlayering of an apparently mellow, anodyne melody with subtly dark, almost dystopic lyrics, especially the lines "Bring down the government/ They don't speak for us now" which could come from a raucous punk song but carry so much more force and depth when delivered in this subdued, understated context to acoustic guitar and a glockenspiel-lead tune.

   In this summer when by far the worst, most inept, most corrupt British prime minister ever to hold office has led his own government to all but implode, Thom Yorke's sweetly crooned lines seem to have resonated with all the more significance.  

lotus flower

I realise I'm, like, so February in this but I've only just got round to listening to Radiohead's King of Limbs which strikes me as remarkable primarily in that it's not a genre-bursting leap forward as all the previous albums have been (with the possible exception of the one after Kid A whose name I forget) but nevertheless a strong, diverse, inventive,alluring work in itself. Only after the magnificence of In Rainbows could this be deemed (as some reviewers have suggested) 'disappointing'.