MUSIC  NEWS

 RADIOHEAD

  AIRBAG/HOW AM I DRIVING? was nominated for the 1999 Grammy
        Award for Best Alternative Music Performance.
 

        1998 saw Radiohead perform pop music's most difficult task--their album
        OK COMPUTER was a critical smash, a worldwide pop hit, and, most
        importantly, a revolutionary step forward from the edgy, perfectly crafted
        pop music of their already masterful early efforts. Reintroducing a sense of
        intellectual adventure into rock music, at times they hearkened back to Pink
        Floyd, from whose compositional experimentation and epic scale they
        obviously gleaned a lesson or two. OK COMPUTER's opening track,
        "Airbag," serves as a starting point for AIRBAG/HOW'S MY DRIVING.

        The self-proclaimed "mini-album" opens with the stormy "Airbag," whose
        furious drum loop and emotive vocal build slowly into a guitar-led orchestra,
        where swirling, ghostly melody lines float and dart, crashing dramatically
        into the song's recurring musical motif. "A Reminder" sets a gentle, ominous
        melody against a backdrop of cascading guitar stabs, while "Polyethylene"
        contrasts pared-down metrical shifts with raging passages full of arena rock
        swagger. The curious, rambling "Melatonin" features almost no vocals, and
        the closer "Palo Alto" is chaotic and moody, filled with dynamic hurtles and
        skittering melody lines.

         Radiohead: Thom Yorke, John Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Colin
        Greenwood, Phil Selway.