20 years Why Radiohead’s ‘The Bends’ won’t fade out anytime soon

From BitTorrent releases to impromptu shows on fashion show catwalks, every aspect of Radiohead in 2015 barely relates to the pent-up aggression and uncertainty defining 1995 classic ‘The Bends’. Twenty years on, the ‘information age’ Thom Yorke’s and co.’s second record wrestled with is long established. Today we’re presented with notifications, minute-by-minute updates, all options open to embracing every corner of the planet. And yet there’s still a sense that we’re running away from our problems, history’s limbo stage anything but a blip. Yorke declares on album opener that “everything is broken / everyone is broken” - and if there’s one direct thread to draw from 1995 to the present day, it’s this observation.

Depressing? Radiohead are the go-to targets for the anti-sad brigade, accused of penning songs with no silver linings. That’s sometimes true, but ‘The Bends’’ brilliance comes in its ability to draw energy and life out of uncertainty. Technology’s wild, breakneck speed transformation was in its baby stages back in 1995, and Radiohead oversaw unease by writing some of their greatest songs.

Scour Radiohead’s recent setlists and the album - regarded by many as their absolute best - barely makes an impact. ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’ sneaks in occasionally, and post-‘In Rainbows’, ‘Just’ and the record’s title-track made appearances. But that was a time when festival headline sets would open ‘Creep’, something that looks unlikely to be replicated. ‘The Bends’ might appear forgotten, but in the grand scheme of what followed, it’s the band’s most important marker.