On paper, this is a pretty good idea. Given the poise of Radiohead’s best work, one imagines they’d stand up well to this kind of treatment, but this collection of 15 reinterpretations falls short of being anything more than a curiosity. The six-string discord of songs like “Airbag” and “Subterranean Homesick Alien” is translated clumsily and unimaginatively, and O’Riley’s habit of replicating Thom Yorke’s vocal lines soon grates, having an alchemy-in-reverse effect of turning even the most affecting compositions into muzak. A spurious attempt at bestowing classical gravitas upon an already respectable oeuvre, then. Stick to the originals.
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