March 13th, 1995

Radiohead drops it's second studio album, The Bends.

The album produced five charting singles: "My Iron Lung", "High and Dry", "Fake Plastic Trees", "Just", and "Street Spirit (Fade Out)"

The title of The Bends refers to decompression sickness, when deep-sea divers come up too quickly — a comment on the band’s sudden fame. Fame, derived from the single 'Creep' that rocketed the band into stardom.  The lyrics are filled with Yorke’s unhappiness.  In "My Iron Lung" he sings “This is our new song/Just like the last one/A total waste of time.” -an obvious dig on the success of 'Creep'.

''Fake Plastic Trees'' was chosen for the first US single.  It peaked at number 11 on Billboards.  Thom Yorke said  “Fake Plastic Trees” was a combination of a “joke that wasn’t really a joke, a very lonely, drunken evening, and, well, a breakdown of sorts.” It's been said the song was partly inspired by the commercial development of Canary Wharf in London. It's basically a song about difficulty of humans connecting to an artificial world. 

Most point to Bends as a gradual turning point for the band.  The grunge-influenced style of the first album, Pablo Honey, showcased Yorke's personal angst.  While Bends had more cryptic lyrics and hit on global and social themes, that showed more in their later work. 

While it remains the bands lowest charting album, most consider it their best.  In Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, The Bends was ranked 110, highest until an updated list moved Kid A up to number 67.

TRACK LISTING

1. "Planet Telex"
2. "The Bends"
3. "High and Dry"
4. "Fake Plastic Trees"
5. "Bones"
6. "(Nice Dream)"
7. "Just"
8. "My Iron Lung"
9. "Bullet Proof..I Wish I Was"
10. "Black Star"
11. "Sulk"
12. "Street Spirit (Fade Out)"

Last week, I went to see Pete Yorn live.  He had an interesting comment.  As a musician, he said he always listened to the last track of an album first.  Said it was how you can find out where the band was headed and how well they can close out an album.  "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" ended up being the highest charting song (in the UK) for Bends. It's been called 'One of the most engaging moments on the record'.  A dreamlike haze with haunting vocals that builds in tension, yet never explodes.  Thom himself was quoted:

Street Spirit is our purest song, but I didn’t write it. It wrote itself. We were just its messengers; its biological catalysts. Its core is a complete mystery to me, and, you know, I wouldn’t ever try to write something that hopeless. All of our saddest songs have somewhere in them at least a glimmer of resolve. Street Spirit has no resolve. It is the dark tunnel without the light at the end. It represents all tragic emotion that is so hurtful that the sound of that melody is its only definition. We all have a way of dealing with that song. It’s called detachment. Especially me; I detach my emotional radar from that song, or I couldn’t play it. I’d crack. I’d break down on stage. That’s why its lyrics are just a bunch of mini-stories or visual images as opposed to a cohesive explanation of its meaning. I used images set to the music that I thought would convey the emotional entirety of the lyric and music working together. That’s what’s meant by ‘all these things you’ll one day swallow whole’. I meant the emotional entirety, because I didn’t have it in me to articulate the emotion. I’d crack… Our fans are braver than I to let that song penetrate them, or maybe they don’t realise what they’re listening to. They don’t realise that Street Spirit is about staring the fucking devil right in the eyes, and knowing, no matter what the hell you do, he’ll get the last laugh. And it’s real, and true. The devil really will get the last laugh in all cases without exception, and if I let myself think about that too long, I’d crack. I can’t believe we have fans that can deal emotionally with that song. That’s why I’m convinced that they don’t know what it’s about. It’s why we play it towards the end of our sets. It drains me, and it shakes me, and hurts like hell every time I play it, looking out at thousands of people cheering and smiling, oblivious to the tragedy of its meaning, like when you’re going to have your dog put down and it’s wagging its tail on the way there. That’s what they all look like, and it breaks my heart. I wish that song hadn’t picked us as its catalysts, and so I don’t claim it. It asks too much. I didn’t write that song