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        The Bends

        Rate It! Avg: 4.5 (125 ratings)
        Sample Album
        The Bends album cover
        01
        Planet Telex
        		 4:22
        		$1.29
        02
        The Bends
        		 4:04
        		$1.29
        03
        High And Dry
        		 4:17
        		$1.29
        04
        Fake Plastic Trees
        		 4:50
        		$1.29
        05
        Bones
        		 3:07
        		$1.29
        06
        (Nice Dream)
        		 3:51
        		$1.29
        07
        Just
        		 3:52
        		$1.29
        08
        My Iron Lung
        		 4:36
        		$1.29
        09
        Bullet Proof ... I Wish I Was
        		 3:28
        		$1.29
        10
        Black Star
        		 4:03
        		$1.29
        11
        Sulk
        		 3:42
        		$1.29
        12
        Street Spirit (Fade Out)
        		 4:13
        		$1.29
        Album Information
        EDITOR'S PICK

        Total Tracks: 12   Total Length: 48:25

        Find a problem with a track? Let us know.

        eMusic Review 0

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        Ryan Dombal

        eMusic Contributor

        05.18.11
        Their first genuinely great album and still their best pop record
        1995 | Label: CAPITOL

        It's their first genuinely great album and still their best pop record. The Bends showed that Radiohead were intent on being more than just a grunge footnote. It was released a year after Kurt Cobain's death and it bursts open the guitar-driven loud-soft dynamic he popularized by adding dollops of U2-style grandeur and Pink Floyd-y atmospherics. Immediately deeper and richer than Pablo Honey, the album hints at the far-reaching ambitions that would soon have a chorus of fans and critics citing them as prophets for a wired generation. These songs are built for sing-alongs in large spaces — crashing highlight "Fake Plastic Trees" continues to send cascades of goosebumps through festival audiences every time it gets pulled out.

        Radiohead also flashed an impressive new range on The Bends, from the straight-up pop-rock of "High and Dry" to the grooving bluster of "Bones" to the hymn-like gorgeousness of finale "Street Spirit (Fade Out)." Everything is elevated even further by Thom Yorke's aching falsetto and its unmatchable angelic sweep. On much of the album, Yorke sings about death and disease — not exactly typical fodder for a burgeoning 26-year-old rock star. But, with his droopy left eye and spastic twitchiness, not much… read more »

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        They Say All Music Guide

        Pablo Honey in no way was adequate preparation for its epic, sprawling follow-up, The Bends. Building from the sweeping, three-guitar attack that punctuated the best moments of Pablo Honey, Radiohead create a grand and forceful sound that nevertheless resonates with anguish and despair — it’s cerebral anthemic rock. Occasionally, the album displays its influences, whether it’s U2, Pink Floyd, R.E.M., or the Pixies, but Radiohead turn clichés inside out, making each song sound bracingly fresh. Thom Yorke’s tortured lyrics give the album a melancholy undercurrent, as does the surging, textured music. But what makes The Bends so remarkable is that it marries such ambitious, and often challenging, instrumental soundscapes to songs that are at their cores hauntingly melodic and accessible. It makes the record compelling upon first listen, but it reveals new details with each listen, and soon it becomes apparent that with The Bends, Radiohead have reinvented anthemic rock. – Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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