Does Radiohead Suck? Why Do You Ask?

Well, this is predictable—and somehow appropriate. Spin (i.e., the last major music magazine that matters) has decided to take on Radiohead (i.e., one of the last major rock bands that matter). The Radiohead Takedown has finally arrived.

In setting out to debunk the myth that “Radiohead Can Do No Wrong,” Chris Norris would have us believe that deep down—buried beneath all the considered appreciation, all the polite criticism, all our tight smiles and nodding heads—is, in fact, a real frustration, an anger, with a band that refuses to sit still, that refuses to play our favorite songs. “… We sit, wearing headphones and frozen grins,” Norris admonishes, while we “continue denying that guilty, nagging feeling that actually, in some ways, when you think about it … Radiohead kinda blow.”

How so? Well, Norris says, they’re boring—not just boring, difficult and boring. If we were truly honest with ourselves, we’d admit that all we really want is for Radiohead to roll out a couple Britrock anthems—just for ol’ time’s sake—and yet they resist, over and over again. “The Bends 2” was not to be, “OK Computer 2” was never in the cards, and now Thom Yorke is talking about not even making records again.

Instead, all we’ve gotten after all these years is “an exceptionally well-dressed jam band.” (When critics start throwing around the j-word, you know somebody’s in for a shit storm.) Look, Norris says pointing to last year’s Radiohead show at New Jersey’s All Points West festival, there they are, “with their thin stubbly faces” churning out one “groovy tone poem” after another, making “an immersive experience of sound, light, pattern, rhythm, and utter, paralyzing boredom.”

Well, first off, no one’s ever said that Radiohead can do no wrong. Even the most dedicated fan has their issues with “Amnesiac” and “Hail to the Thief.” And the band’s decision to release “In Rainbows” online on a pay-what-you-want basis, though brilliant, had it’s fair share of problems—one of them being, as Norris points out, that only Radiohead and their millions could have pulled it off.

But that, really, is the whole point. Radiohead had their early successes (the records that we all grew up with and came to love) in a time when the record industry could still feed itself and rock stars could still be created, thereby giving the band the license for its latter adventures (the records most of us also love, and more of us respect). Radiohead are one of the last of its kind: a talented band able to take big risks on a big stage. That the band has chosen to actually take those risks again and again and again, success or not, may be their most outstanding achievement. That those risks have tended to pay off—for me and many other folks, anyway—is only icing on the digital cake.

Secondly, I was at that All Points West show, and I wasn’t bored—nor was anyone else. If there was some great populist plea from the audience for the band to drop all their synthesizers and play “The Bends” front to back, I didn’t hear it. Norris’ argument, that Yorke and co. are pricks for ignoring their talent for writing great rock songs and the fans that want to hear them, could have been made two years ago, five years ago, or really, 12 years ago when Radiohead released “OK Computer”—a record now hailed as a masterpiece by every supposed Radiohead classicist—but one Yorke thought would be trashed for being too weird, too spacey, too depressing. And yet to this day, Yorke, to his evident consternation, has been forced to continually remind people, friend and foe alike, that no, the next record won’t sound like “OK Computer,” and no, it probably won’t sound like the last record either. “Do you feel like there’s any definite sound that you’ve been solidifying over your career,” The Believer asked Yorke this summer. “I fucking hope not,” was the only reply.

And thank fucking god. Do we really want Radiohead to throw their hands up in the air and do our bidding? As Norris himself admits, if “they were the type of band that took advice, they wouldn’t be Radiohead.” Exactly. Why, particularly now, with things so dire, with the industry so hobbled, with major risk-takers so vacant from the national stage, would we want fewer surprises, less weirdness, diminished ambitions—just some good old times? Now is not the time for nostalgia.

Even when it comes to encores. Norris reserves particular scorn for Yorke’s first encore at All Points West—a hypnotic and little-known piano ballad called “Cymbal Rush” from the singer’s solo record, “The Eraser”—which he took as evidence that Yorke “was so far up his own formalist ass we might as well have not even been there.” Here, in other words, was Yorke, the cold-hearted rock-star art god ignoring his fans while he plinks away at his pain.

Norris might have remembered that Yorke started the whole thing off with the most human of mistakes: He forgot how the song began. There he was, alone on stage in front of thousands of hushed fans, forgetting the opening chords to his own song. And yet Thom, stubborn as always, hammered away until he remembered the melody, at which point he smiled, apologized, and continued on his (not so) merry way. See, Radiohead can do wrong.