Airbag/How Am I Driving? [EP] [EP] [Limited]

Performer: Radiohead
Engineer: Nigel Godrich
Distributor: EMI Music Distribution

Notes: Radiohead: Thom Yorke, John Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Colin Greenwood, Phil Selway. All tracks except track 1 were previously unavailable in the United States. 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 AM I 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 burst onto the Britpop scene in the early 1990s with a clamorous, post-U2 take on guitar rock, buoyed by the hit "Creep." They subsequently developed their songwriting and production skills on THE BENDS and achieved iconic status with their breakthrough album OK COMPUTER, making art-rock cool again in the process. The mercurial band's long-awaited follow-up three years later was a sharp left turn full of ambient electronics and Can-like sonic deconstruction, and they've continued the trend with subsequent albums and solo projects. The connecting thread through all the band's phases has been Thom Yorke's intense vocal frenzy.

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