collection.This is a perfect album. There's no skipping. There's no playing selected tracks. It's on from start to finish. Its beauty encompasses you, its sadness tears at you, its wistfulness makes your heart ache.
It's not just the exquisite music or brilliant lyrics. It's the way Thom Yorke's voice plays on your emotions that makes you go through such a range of feelings with him that when the album is done playing you feel like you've been born, died, been born again and have gone through the 12 stages of death and the myriad stages of PMS in just under an hour.
The Bends is quiet and understated and that is what makes it so powerful. It's almost like Yorke's voice is a meek companion to the music; with layers of self consciousness amplified by his tone shifts, the meekness becomes a strength and you are swept away with the songs, wallowing with them. For that is what The Bends is. It's a long wallow, a journey into self pity slathered with bitterness and yearning.
If Bulletproof doesn't make you weep with empathy, then Fake Plastic Trees will do the trick.
But I can't help the feeling
I could blow through the ceiling
If I just turn and run
And it wears me out, it wears me out
It wears me out, it wears me out
And if I could be who you wanted
If I could be who you wanted
All the time, all the time
It's the abject sadness and wistfulness in Thom Yorke's voice, it's the way the music sweeps up and then drops suddenly, the soul crushing way Yorke meekly pulls the last "all the time" out of his throat.
And yea, it's the words. It's like a sharp stick poking at my brain and my heart. But I will never stop listening to it, because I will never stop listening to this album.
Favorite song: Fake Plastic Trees
Green Plastic
