A song-for-song reggae cover of Radiohead's OK Computer. Called Radiodread. I know what you're thinking, but don't go away just yet. There's no question that OK Computer is an imposing album to reinterpret-- the songs are strongly attached to their arrangements and production, including some tricky time signatures that don't show up in reggae much, if at all. More broadly, OK Computer is a complete, bold statement. Getting enough distance from such familiar songs to make something different is a huge challenge.
It's a challenge the Easy Star crew has faced before. They made a smashing success out of their cover of Dark Side of the Moon-- called, yes, Dub Side of the Moon-- a few years ago, and that's nearly as improbable as this. To put all my cards down, both Dark Side and OK Computer reside in my all-time top 10, and beyond that, I love Jamaican music in just about all of its permutations. In that respect, I suppose that makes me something of an ideal target audience for these discs. Getting past my own taste, though, people who cherish OK Computer should get a kick out of hearing all of the album's little details-- and there are countless little details-- imaginatively and thoroughly reinterpreted. It goes without saying that if you hate reggae, you probably don't belong here, but that isn't necessarily true of people who hate Radiohead; that lot might be surprised by how adaptable these songs are.
Radiodread's biggest successes come on songs that represent the original's musical extremes. The opening take on "Airbag", featuring veteran Horace Andy on vocals, is brilliant, doubling the long, sawing guitar riffs with trombone while capturing every one of the original's countermelodies and nuances, all over the familiar skanking beat of reggae. And the bassline hasn't changed a bit, fitting the after-beat groove perfectly. The dubbed-out take on "Climbing Up the Walls" sacrifices the claustrophobia of the Radiohead version in favor of an echo chamber romp that replaces the string-and-guitar apocalypse with a startling horn arrangement straight out of Lee Perry's darkest nightmare. "No Surprises", sung by the timeless trio the Meditations, translates nicely, and the backing vocals fill in some of the guitar parts well, while "Electioneering", perhaps the most maligned song on OK Computer, also sounds great converted into political reggae.
Oh, but it gets so much better. I remember the moment it first dawned on me what a fantastic song "Let Down" is: I was working as a middle school janitor, replacing lightbulbs in a locker room, when it came on my stereo. I'd listened to OK Computer just a couple of times at that point, and I actually had to stop to take it all in. The Easy Star All-Stars snagged Toots & the Maytals to helm their version, and they take the song in an old-school ska direction, using the horns in place of the chiming guitar interludes. The original's crushing sorrow here becomes oddly celebratory, as though these things that wounded Thom Yorke make Toots Hibbert more comfortable with his own humanity.
When the record falters, it's usually because it doesn't take things far enough from the original blueprint. "Subterranean Homesick Alien", for instance, hardly even has a reggae beat; Junior Jazz is a fine singer, and the replacement of the lead instruments with dubbed-out melodica is clever, but the song sounds only slightly different in this form, and doesn't fulfill the promise of the project. "Paranoid Android" encounters some of the same problems, the weird meter having apparently thrown arranger Michael Goldwasser a bit. The slow "rain down" section amusingly changes "God loves his children" to "Jah loves his children," but it's only on the riffy 7/4 bits, here turned over to the horns, where it sounds truly inspired. You'd think "Fitter Happier" would've made a perfect excuse to work up a crazy dub instrumental, too, but instead, it's a slightly altered version of the original read by a Jamaican instead of a Macintosh.
If anything, this disc could have been even more uniformly bold in taking control of these songs. It's rare that you hear a complete transposition of an entire album, much less such a singular one, into a wholly different musical realm with a completely different sensibility. In this case, with a crack band and some game collaborators, Goldwasser has done just that, with far more success than the idea warranted. I'm sure there are humorless purists who'll be infuriated by the mere thought of Radiodread; for everyone else, this is an entertaining project that occasionally rises above its potential novelty status.
