Pitchfork

A little more than a decade ago, Radiohead issued their third album, OK Computer; in the time since, it's become arguably the most lauded album released over the past 10 years, claiming spots on Rolling Stone's 90s/00s-starved Top 500 albums countdown, as well as all-time lists created by Time and NME. In 2005, Spin also selected it as the best album in the magazine's first 20 years, while we at Pitchfork had pegged it as the best album of the 1990s two years earlier.

OK Computer-- primarily written and recorded in 1996-- was created at a time when British rock was colored by nationalist backslapping and necrophilia. On both sides of the Atlantic, meanwhile, dance music was bigger than it had been in years-- despite becoming creatively unhealthy: A decade of almost unparalleled progression in dance had, in the UK, culminated in Big Box-like superclubs and a focus on superstar DJ and artist albums, while the U.S. music media made a belated and clumsy embrace to exalt what it called electronica.

In this environment, the Prodigy's The Fat of the Land was released in America the same day as OK Computer, and, not surprisingly, made a much larger initial impact, landing at No. 1 on the charts (OKC debuted at No. 21). In the U.S., the Prodigy were heralded as the bellwethers for electronica, while, in the face of electronic music-- and exponentially rising sales of country and hip-hop-- Radiohead were charged by some critics with the minor task of "saving" rock music. Oddly, the two records seemed to have opposite effects: Throughout the late 1990s and early 00s, Thom Yorke practically functioned as a Warp publicist, helping to expose rock fans to electronic textures and sounds, while the Prodigy-- along with Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against the Machine, and Korn-- inadvertently spawned the well-selling mook rock.

Crucially, OK Computer engaged with the textures and limitless sonic possibilities of electronic music while still retaining what Simon Reynolds called in Uncut the "complicated emotions, spiritual nourishment, and solace that rock at its best had always provided." Out of the wilderness of retro Britpop and the diminishing returns of dance, OK Computer was-- along with records by Spiritualized, the Verve, Primal Scream, and Björk-- among a handful of 1997 releases that split the difference between the two, embracing the possibilities and future of electronic music but retaining the charisma, scope, and grandeur of rock music.

Of the five, Radiohead accomplished the task best; a live performance in Chicago a week after the album's U.S. release seemed, at the risk of sounding corny, almost magical, the right music for the times, performed by curious, restless music fans who had a way with not only hooks and melodies but atmospherics as well. If Yorke's vocals and lyrics seemed vague or impressionistic-- one of the few regular complaints lobbed at the band-- they also expressed a fear of the unknown, an unsettling and prescient mix of technophobia, anxiety, and growing environmental concerns that we'd probably happily trade for today's more tangible global problems. (This desperate fear of unknown forces, apathetic to your individual plight, was best articulated in the "Karma Police" video, while the 90s apathy and indifference to the creeping dangers of global warming, terrorism, AIDS, and global poverty was best articulated by the clip for "No Surprises".)

Over the band's next two albums-- Kid A and Amnesiac-- it continued to craft even more forward-thinking rock music. Alas, the two records pushed a bit too far to the left of the "organic" and "authentic" (you know, instruments carved from wood) for many of those who had exalted Radiohead upon OKC's release. Many critics, when faced with having to both step outside their historical comfort zones and recalibrate their sensibilities or retreat back to the familiar, took the easy road and embraced the New Rock Revolution. Listeners, too, when faced with choosing something new and unique, have often valued the familiar and rote: In the UK, retro-rock regained its foothold, while on both sides of the Atlantic, the "spiritual nourishment" of Radiohead was embraced, but it's been presented primarily in beds of bombast or MOR tunesmithery. (Fortunately, the risk-taking and the blend of the organic and futuristic that Radiohead seemingly encouraged has, finally, in recent years been resurrected by artists such as the Knife, Liars, and Animal Collective.)

In the years since, Radiohead have been the subject of many tribute albums, most of which we did not like. Stereogum, our friends-slash-bitter, bitter rivals, have nevertheless taken the plunge and curated yet another tribute album and…it turned out very well!

OK X: A Tribute to OK Computer is Stereogum's first original music collection, and it gathers more than a dozen of the popular blog's favorite indie artists for a thankfully unfaithful version of the landmark album. The guys at Stereogum have provided an LP cover, as well as liner notes from each artist involved and, this being the internet and all, are naturally giving away the whole damn thing for free. What a world we live in.

The album's official tracklist is:

01. Doveman: "Airbag"
02. Slaraffenland: "Paranoid Android"
03. Mobius Band: "Subterranean Homesick Alien"
04. Vampire Weekend: "Exit Music (For a Film)"
05. David Bazan's Black Cloud: "Let Down"
06. John Vanderslice: "Karma Police"
07. Samson Dalonoga [ft. The Found Sound Orchestra]: "Fitter Happier"
08. Cold War Kids: "Electioneering"
09. The Twilight Sad: "Climbing Up the Walls"
10. Marissa Nadler [ft. Black Hole Infinity]: "No Surprises"
11. My Brightest Diamond: "Lucky"
12. Flash Hawk Parlor Ensemble: "The Tourist"

The most immediately striking thing about the record is how gorgeous it sounds. This album was, by its creators' admission, a bit of slapdash effort, pulled together in a short period of time. But despite that-- and the fact that each artist recorded their tracks individually-- it has a remarkably uniform, well-conceived feel. Some credit for that should go to Paul J. Geissinger, who mastered the record, but part of it is down to this group of different artists approaching OKC and taking away many of the same things, often embracing the record's texture and atmospherics.

Most admirable is that each artist, despite an obvious reverence for one of modern rock music's few sacred texts, was wiling to imbue their performance with their own personality, and many of the generally straightforward artists embraced the more boundary-pushing aspects of Radiohead's catalog, staying faithful to the spirit of Radiohead's songs without merely replicating them or retreating to an acoustic guitar-and-stool approach.

Where the project does stick primarily to the center is that many of the artists decided to shave down the catharsis of the originals, a move that sounds dull on paper but appropriately makes the record's pre-millennial tension sound like weathered, post-millennial helplessness. This approach results straightaway in two of the record's best tracks: Doveman opens the album with a patient retelling of "Airbag" that comes across as more foreboding and paranoid than the original. That's followed by Danish band Slaraffenland, who uses all the brass, winds, and strings in their Do Make Say Think-like arsenal to alter the already complex arrangements of "Paranoid Android", shaving off the bluster at the end of track.

Other highlights include Marissa Nadler's gorgeous take on "No Surprises", David Bazan's tribal, swirling "Let Down", upstart buzz band Vampire Weekend recasting "Exit Music (for a Film)" as a lonely night-time drive, and Twilight Sad turning the already violent "Climbing Up the Walls" into, well, a Twilight Sad song-- there's the build to a wall of dissonant guitar, right on cue.

Less enjoyable are the Cold War Kids-- it's going to sound like knee-jerk piling on at this point, but my god, that voice. (At least they got the LP's worst song, "Electioneering".) Also fairing poorly is a certain guest comic's downright puzzling Amos 'n' Andy work on "Fitter Happier", and Chris Funk's Flash Hawk Parlor Ensemble, whose take on LP comedown "The Tourist" is less decompression and more irritation. It's also the album's one clear nod to indie-folk, closing the proceedings with a fitting jerk back into indie circa 2007.

Congrats to Stereogum and all the artists involved.