The most unknown 1990s album: Do Radiohead have a lost masterpiece?
For many of music’s biggest names, rumours of an abandoned record that lies buried deep in a band or label’s vaults often can become a key feature of an artist’s mythos. Some are simply posthumous ‘what ifs?’ such as Jimi Hendrix‘s Black Gold sessions never completed due to his untimely death in 1970.
Others are neglected for good reason, Pink Floyd shelving Household Objects—an attempt to record an album entirely of domestic appliances—to make way for the infinitely more essential The Dark Side of the Moon. A few will see the light of day, Prince’s The Black Album and Brian Wilson’s Smile opus, finally gifted to the world after spooking their creators.
The online rumour mill forever grinding away with half-truths and embellished lores, has held Oxford art rockers Radiohead’s official album trajectory into question. According to the fringe corners of Reddit or Instagram fan accounts, following their acclaimed sophomore The Bends LP, Radiohead had cut an entire record but binned it last minute to pursue OK Computer‘s digitally-soaked pre-millennial horror rock.
Radiohead’s mid-1990s interim period was fruitful. Around two landmark albums was a plethora of fantastic B-sides, many scooped up for the My Iron Lung and No Surprises / Running from Demons EPs. Famous for performing songs live long before ever cutting definitive studio versions, ‘Nude’, ‘True Love Waits’ and ‘Pyramid Song’ all had haphazardly floated around their sets before being immortalised on record. Fans still obsess over pieces that have taken on mythic life, ‘Dogwander’, ‘Riding a Bullet’, and ‘Come to Your Senses’ still kept in the band’s filing cabinet.
We know that Radiohead possesses hours upon hours of material across their over thirty-year tenure. Like any other band, a voluminous amount of demos, jams, and song sketches lie in Radiohead’s musical vault, seemingly well away from the reach of eager fans whose curiosity gets the better of them. This was suddenly revealed spectacularly following 2019’s high-profile hacking of the OK Computer sessions. Facing a potential $150k ransom figure, Radiohead instead made all available on their Bandcamp for £18 with proceeds directed to Extinction Rebellion.
You’d think that such a digital break-in would uncover the holy ‘lost album’, but the MINIDISCS [HACKED] compilation, while offering an interesting window into their creative process, consisted largely of band noodling and studio bustle, dull but essential to making any record.
Besides, whatever juicy cuts that had been held to the band’s chest had already been gifted to the world via the OKNOTOK 1997 2017 reissue of their acclaimed third LP, ‘I Promise’, ‘Man of War’, and ‘Lift’, seeing official releases. The following Kid A Mnesia package—compiling both albums’ sessions as the two-volume project it was initially toyed as—also yielded ‘If You Say the Word’ and ‘Follow Me Around’.
Nothing to see here folks, just a band who’s not interested in chucking their fan base any old shit without any obligation to reveal every nook and cranny of their creative development. Mythic lost albums can often be a fun component of a band’s story, but in the case of Radiohead’ supposed buried alt-rock Holy Grail, it’s likely a load of bollocks.
