The Bends

Rolling Stone (p.64) - 4.5 stars out of 5 -- "[With a] wild sweep of sound colors and exploded emotional palette..." Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.120) - Ranked #110 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time" - "[O]peratic, marrying a majestic and somber guitar sound to the virtuosic urgency of Thom Yorke's vocals..." Rolling Stone (5/13/99, pp.58-59) - Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's." Rolling Stone (5/18/95, p.88) - 3.5 Stars - Very Good - "...THE BENDS [is] a sonically ambitious album that offers no easy hits. It's a guitar field day, blending acoustic strumming with twitches of fuzzy tremolo and eruptions of amplified paranoia..." Entertainment Weekly (p.67) - "Fourteen years later, Coldplay and dozens of lesser imitators are still hammering away at the stadium-size melancholy Radiohead perfected here." Entertainment Weekly (4/7/95, p.92) - "...Sometimes folky, sometimes rocky, the sophomore album from this English band offers a smorgasbord of guitar flavors, most of them tasty, The stylistic leaps make for schizoid listening....but give these boys credit for not standing still..." - Rating: B+ Q (6/00, p.75) - Ranked #35 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums" Q (10/01, p.106) - Ranked #4 in Q's "Best 50 Albums of Q's Lifetime" Q (12/99, p.84) - Included in Q Magazine's "90 Best Albums Of The 1990s." Q (2/96, p.63) - Included in Q's 50 Best Albums of 1995 - "...THE BENDS' lasting mightiness is confirmed--as is the scary impression that they'll only get better..." Alternative Press (4/95, p.71) - "...THE BENDS' greatest asset is its approximation of London Suede, all the parody and none of the pomp....THE BENDS proves that Radiohead didn't shoot their bolt with `Creep.' That there's a lot more stirring down there than their recent past might admit..." Melody Maker (12/23-30/95, pp.66-67) - Ranked #6 on Melody Maker's list of 1995's `Albums Of The Year' - "Rock as self-evisceration....consistently, savagely brilliant..." Billboard - "On these dozen songs, Yorke comes into his own as a troubled, enigmatic lyricist and howler of haunted melodies." Mojo (Publisher) (p.65) - Ranked #16 in Mojo's "100 Modern Classics" -- "[With] songs of such unpredictable elegance they would touch the heart in any setting." NME (Magazine) (8/12/00, p.29) - Ranked #30 in The NME "Top 30 Heartbreak Albums" - "...Suburban bleakness....More personal than OK COMPUTER and all the more chilling for it." NME (Magazine) (12/23-30/95, pp.22-23) - Ranked #4 in NME's `Top 50 Albums Of The Year' for 1995. Pitchfork (Website) - "THE BENDS was essentially split between these poles: warmth and tension; riffs and texture; rock and post-rock..." Record Collector (magazine) (p.89) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "It had it all....Yorke's gloriously acerbic sarcasm ringing true throughout."