Deep Cuts Eight of Radiohead’s non-album highlights

The bonus disc released alongside 2007’s ‘In Rainbows’ holds some of Radiohead’s most special hidden gems. ‘Bangers & Mash’ is a scrappy, frenetic cut, and ‘Down Is The New Up”s majesty would have fitted perfectly onto the main album, but ‘Last Flowers’ is its jewel, and a song which doesn’t deserve its status as a much-forgotten b-side. The track - often referred to as ‘Last Flowers To The Hospital’ - is the most bare Thom Yorke has laid himself since ‘OK Computer’, and one of the very best songs not granted space on an LP.

One of the tracks to disappear from Spotify today was ‘Fog’, a track from disc 2 of ‘Amnesiac’. The track is carried by Colin Greenwood’s bass - a haunting ever-present that works with the song’s foreboding lyrics “some things will never wash away / did you go bad?” to provide one of the highlights of the ‘Amnesiac’ era. A live, piano-led version of the track, ‘Fog (Again)’, appeared on 2004’s ‘Com Lag’ EP.

This track, which ‘leaked’ - either through Radiohead or not - in 2009, is the most well-known track to appear in the gap between ‘In Rainbows’ and ‘The King of Limbs’. ‘These Are My Twisted Words’ maintains Philip Selway’s precise, immovable percussion that defined ‘In Rainbows’, and while the track doesn’t make the most amount of sense as a one-off single, it may yet finds its way onto a future Radiohead release - one where it would truly find its home.

While Radiohead have been consistently lauded across their career as being timeless, ‘How I Made My Millions’ is immediately recognisable as an ‘OK Computer’-era track. The ‘No Surprises’ b-side transmits the same bleakness as large amounts of the album, and is a worthy counterpart to its a-side.

Radiohead’s ‘From The Basement’ series - in which the band have played ‘In Rainbows’ and ‘The King of Limbs’ as well as related b-sides in their practice space - are widely recognised as some of their most special live performances. ‘Staircase’ was a track recorded in the basement sessions for ‘The King Of Limbs’ alongside ‘The Daily Mail’, and is a flowing, haunting cut that probably deserved a place on ‘TKOL’.

The ‘Com Lag (2Plus2IsFive)’ EP, released in Japan and Australia in 2004, was a worthy footnote to the ‘Hail To The Thief’ era and its highlights included a Four Tet remix of ‘Scatterbrain’ and a live version of the thunderous ‘2+2=5’ from their Earls Court show in 2003, but ‘Paperbag Writer’ is the pick of the originals on the release, as glitchy and intriguing as the best bits of ‘Hail To The Thief’.

A track which first appeared as the b-side for 1996 single ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’, and on the bonus disc of EMI’s 2008 Best Of - which the band weren’t too happy about being associated with - ‘Talk Show Host’ justifies its position on both of these releases, with a bewitching lead guitar line and vocals spat out by Yorke.

In an interview updating fans on the progress of LP9 last year, Jonny Greenwood suggested that they might finally be recording ‘Lift’, a track they frequently played live around the release of ‘The Bends’. Greenwood said: “What people don’t know is that there’s a very old song on each album, like ‘Nude’ on ‘In Rainbows’. We never found the right arrangement for that, until then. ‘Lift’ is just like that. When the idea is right, it stays right. It doesn’t really matter in which form.” Watch the band play ‘Lift’ live below, and try and imagine it on the new album. Go on.

Tags: Features, Listen, Radiohead