Track Listing

1. Airbag
2. Pearly
3. Meeting In The Aisle
4. Reminder
5. Polythylene
6. Melatonin
7. Palo Alto

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3918 in Music
• Released on: 2007-03-26
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: EP, Limited Edition
• Dimensions: .16 pounds

CD Description
1998 saw Radiohead perform pop music's most difficult task--their album OK COMPUTER was a critical smash, a worldwide pop hit, and, most importantly, a revolutionary step forward from the edgy, perfectly crafted pop music of their already masterful early efforts. Reintroducing a sense of intellectual adventure into rock music, at times they hearkened back to Pink Floyd, from whose compositional experimentation and epic scale they obviously gleaned a lesson or two. OK COMPUTER's opening track, "Airbag", serves as a starting point for AIRBAG/HOW AM I DRIVING.
The self-proclaimed "mini-album"opens with the stormy "Airbag", whose furious drum loop andemotive vocal build slowly into a guitar-led orchestra, where swirling, ghostly melody lines float and dart, crashing dramatically into the song's recurring musical motif. "A Reminder" sets a gentle, ominous melody against a backdrop of cascading guitar stabs, while "Polyethylene" contrasts pared-down metrical shifts with raging passages full of arena rock swagger. The curious, rambling "Melatonin" features almost no vocals, and the closer "Palo Alto" is chaotic and moody, filled with dynamic hurtles and skittering melody lines.

Customer Reviews

Radiohead
This EP is a treat for Radiohead fans who feel The bends and Ok computer are the band's best albums.
Apart from Airbag the rest of the tracks are B sides and they feel more like OK computer than The bends. My favorute track is Reminder because of the electric guitars.
Slighty expensive but is worth every penny.
Go ahead and buy it

mind-warping
following ok computer, this short compilation of mere B-Sides (except, of course, Airbag itself) served to prove that which hardly needed proving: radiohead were in a world of their own, far ahead of their peers...

its songs like "Pearly" and "Polyethelene" that reinforce that cool 21stCentury Pink-Floyd vibe, with the added twist that only radiohead can produce. Thom's vocals are heart-stopping - constantly to the fore and teasing your emotions - meanwhile, the guitars enjoy (suffer?) the studio effects mangling that made ok computer so unique.

"Meeting in the Aisle" is a standout, as a sleepy, dreamy groove with sampled beats, it's the 'head's first instrumental, and a direct indication of where they were aiming to go with kid a. But "Palo Alto" is the final track, in which Thom sings "I'm ok, how are you? Thanks for asking, thanks for asking..." in a typically cynical and sardonic comment on modern communication. The spiky guitars and warped sound effects, coupled with some 'real' guitar playing by Jonny Greenwood (before he got to grips with the Martenot, and shunned all use of the guitar) completes the Ok Computer chapter.

A stunning piece of work. Buy it. Play it, leave it on repeat and think back to 1997...

Fills the gap between OK Computer and Kid A
This mini-album is really quite brilliant, moreso when you consider that it's made up of songs that were seen as not good enough to be on "OK Computer" (except Airbag, natch). The most surprising thing is that "How Am I Driving?" perfectly fills the gap between "OK Computer" and "Kid A"; tracks like Melatonin and instrumental Meeting in the Aisle would fit seamlessly onto either album.

There are some real gems to be found on this EP. Polyethylene was reportedly one of the band's favourites from the "OK Computer" sessions, but was left out of the final tracklisting. It's easy to see why they were fond of it - the guitars and melody are just perfect. It's almost "Bends"-like, except for the division into Parts 1 and 2 which gives it a unique twist.

A Reminder is a wonderful song with a tragic sentiment; Thom sings of his fear of losing his mind when he grows old, with this song being - just as it's name implies - a reminder of who he was when he was young.

Palo Alto was one of the first songs written for "OK Computer", and was originally known as OK Computer itself. According to Jonny, they hated the song and quickly dumped it, but kept the name. However, they then decided to overhaul it for a B-side release and came up with a delightful crunchy guitar-pop song, not dissimilar to Electioneering.

It may only be eight songs long and be a tad over-expensive, but it really is worth having.