Listen here!
Ok, I understand that OK Computer is a modern day Sgt. Pepper's by now, and that covering its songs with any outwardly apparent effort to improve upon them is likely just to leave you waxy and scorned for your high-falutin' highfliyin'. So you, the covering artist, seek an escape route; your instinct is just to do something different. It's not better, but at least I provided some new twist!
Unfortunately, on this particular tribute, the main twist seems to be to drop half the instruments, shave off a dozen or two BPMs, and to lay down skeletal take after skeletal take, resulting in a desolate, largely tuneless album. Also, strangely, one almost completely bereft of guitars, as if everyone wanted to stay ahead of the curve by sounding like Radiohead a couple of years later. Slaraffenland, covering Paranoid Android, is the worst offender, wilting at the challenge of the song, leaking out a meandering, bloodless half-take. Elsewhere, the covers of Let Down, Karma Police and Climbing up the Walls are skim milk versions, putting on only the barest twists, sounding undisasterous and unadventurous.
On the upside?
1. Subterranean Homesick Alien is what I wish the rest of the album had
been, grabbing the highway driving theme by the horns and taking it to a new level, pumping the
beat up to a full-blown reflector-tick motorik.
2. That Tourist version is one of the tribute's only injections of fun, sounding wholly new and somehow in the spirit of the original, breaking up the endgame malaise that always struck me as a bit overmuch on OK Computer as a bonus.
3. That's possibly the best possible cover of Fitter, Happier you can do, sounding snarky and spontaneous and full of little flourishes. Seriously, how else do you even do that song that would be half as good as this?
And sometimes on an album like this, when the original is so unassailable, all you can hope for is a couple of hits. And at least this is a tribute, you know, made by people who actually wanted to pay tribute, or at least had heard the songs before, ever. Still, as a decontextualized actual listen? Eh, for my part, I'm not likely to slog through it ever again 2.5/5
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