The Bends

The first high-quality album by Radiohead, "The Bends" was an effort to match the ambition of Oasis while being entirely opposite in tone. The result is a reverby, post-britpot thing that's well in line with the work of head producer John Leckie, who most notably produced the Stone Roses' debut album. On the production team was Nigel Godrich, whom the band would collaborate with as a lead producer on every forthcoming release of theirs.

It's not nearly as heady as Radiohead's future releases (this was back when Thom Yorke held the misguided pretense of achieving everyman relatability a la Morrissey), but is equally as angsty, perhaps even more so. Every track, no matter how sugary in structure and production, maintains an air of nihilistic foreboding. It's quite obvious that Yorke was dissatisfied with his career as well as his young adult life at large. As the album progresses, the music becomes increasingly somber in tone, beginning with the fatalistic bombast of "Planet Telex", leading into the theatric ennui of "The Bends", and, just shy of 40 minutes later, concluding with the soul-draining doom-and-gloom of "Street Spirit", a song which to this day holds up as one of Radiohead's most ominous, despairing songs - no small feat indeed.