If anything, The Bends is proof that even in their formative years, Radiohead could master anything they wanted to do. Their album sounds at once British and at once grunge-y, immediate and visceral. It’s much better than Pablo Honey. The band immediately grasps a style, and within two albums, has sufficiently mastered it.

Fans of 90s rock know that High and Dry is better than anything Oasis or Dave Matthews put out. And tracks like My Iron Lung hint at a future for Radiohead that wasn’t going to be focused on driving rock riffs so much as it was introspection and jazz.

To The Bends’s credit, it’s hard to play any track from it without recognizing it thanks to all the radio play the album has received over the years. Whether it’s Fake Plastic Trees, Planet Telex, My Iron Lung, or even Just, it’s hard to imagine rock radio without these songs. Radiohead had a formative influence on the industry even before they became art rock pioneers.

In that sense, The Bends is a great record. It would stand among the best in most bands’ catalogues. Radiohead, though, isn’t like most bands. The group is clearly gifted on The Bends, but in hindsight, they were clearly right to focus on a record like OK Computer instead of The Bends 2. Today, it’s a perfectly serviceable record, but it’s impossible to remove it from the success of everything Radiohead would do it later.

All that being said: I’d be interested in an experiment where Radiohead re-interprets each of these songs in their post-rock, art rock styles. An experiment like that would be more revealing about the band’s original intentions than these songs already are.

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As a singer-songwriter, Emmylou Harris is a pastiche of her times and her inspiration. She has a lot of country overtones that might make fans of more modern acts a little uncomfortable, but even if you’re not into country, there’s a lot to like here.

Emmylou Harris’s voice is outstanding, and her songwriting is exceptional. But she’s able to hit emotional chords in the first track that few artists can hit in the span of an entire album. Her voice has an angelic quality to it, and her music sounds pastoral in the hymnal sense of the word: at once sounding like the daughter of Dolly Parton and a gospel singer, Emmylous Harris is able to construct hymns out of sorrow and pain. Truly one of the greats.

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Regardless, Moby is releasing a new record in October called Innocents (Wikipedia link). I’ve heard it’s the bomb. In prep, you might as well listen to his best record, Everything Is Wrong. Some people are going to remember this album for the real trend-setting hits, like Feeling So Real or Everytime You Touch Me. Maybe they’ll remember it for the edgier tracks like What Love. That’s all cool, but for me, the album really stands out thanks to three quieter songs.

Into the Blue charms with its swooning vocals and driving bass. God Moving Over the Face of the Waters is self-aware of its beauty, but that’s okay because it is incredibly beautiful. But for me, the real star track of the entire album, the one that hits the hardest, is When It’s Cold I’d Like to Die. It sends shivers down my spine.

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