Radiohead The Bends

4.5 stars out of 5 -- "[With a] wild sweep of sound colors and exploded emotional palette..."
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..."
Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's."
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..."
"Fourteen years later, Coldplay and dozens of lesser imitators are still hammering away at the stadium-size melancholy Radiohead perfected here."
"...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+
Ranked #35 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums"
Ranked #4 in Q's "Best 50 Albums of Q's Lifetime"
Included in Q Magazine's "90 Best Albums Of The 1990s."
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..."
"...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..."
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."
Ranked #16 in Mojo's "100 Modern Classics" -- "[With] songs of such unpredictable elegance they would touch the heart in any setting."
Ranked #30 in The NME "Top 30 Heartbreak Albums" - "...Suburban bleakness....More personal than OK COMPUTER and all the more chilling for it."
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..."
5 stars out of 5 -- "It had it all....Yorke's gloriously acerbic sarcasm ringing true throughout."