Rosie Carney

 From The Bends to erm,The Bends. A repost for a great reinvention of a great album, released last year.

A record that has occupied my listening time quite a lot over the last few days has been an album by a young Irish musician named Rosie Carney caled The Bends which is exactly that, a track by track cover of the classic Radiohead album which came out originally way back in 1995.

A lifetime ago, or at least a half or perhaps more accurately a third of a lifetime. The original was an album that has meant a lot to me, certainly at the time and since, though I probably don't play it every year. This is as good a way as any to re-evaluate it.

The Bends is probably the best set of pure songs that Radiohead have ever put out. It's still many fans favourite of theirs, though it was the next one, OK Computer that guaranteed their seats in Rock and Roll's Mount Olympus, should such a thing exist.

The Bends though probably offers a clearer narrative. It's essentially about a prolonged panic attack or perhaps a protracted nervous breakdown, the musical equivalent of Catcher in the Rye or The Bell Jar transposed to the Nineties. 

Not that it was ever a difficult record to listen to because the twelve tracks that make up the album are exquisitely crafted one and all. This is no suicide note, no Closer or In Utero and Thom Yorke was never going the way of Ian or Kurt despite his protestations to the contrary and how dark and bleak the themes he and his band explored appeared on the surface.

And there's the rub. Because there's a reasonable argument to be made that a Radiohead album without Thom Yorke might actually be an improvement on one with him there. For though he lays a strong claim of being one of the two arguable geniuses within the band, (the other being Johnny Greenwood), he is also the prime factor that Radiohead deniers put forward when a discussion about the band's greatness is being had.

Not the case here. Because here you get Thom's fabulous songs without Thom's relentless and draining self pity. Carney does a really, really wonderful job, exploring the nuances and textures of these marvellous creations, teasing out new layers and emotional profundity from songs you didn't realise had any more to offer.    

I heard lyrics that I'd never really heard before and felt emotions that the original had never quite provoked, remarkable though it undeniably is. This is the measure of the really well achieved

cover and Carney has delivered a whole suite of them here.

There's plenty to a marvel at still in the original and one of the first things I'll do now is go back to it and compare and contrast. But once I have, I'll definitely come back here, because it teases fresh beauty out of the bones of something that more than occasionally hinted at emotional desolation.

There's greater consolation here. Greater empathy. Greater warmth. Less despair. While taking nothing away from the marvellous anguish Carney injects a basic humanity, which let's face it, was never Yorke's strong card.

Regardless of how much the original means to you, and I hope it does mean something, because it's a quite fantastic album, please give this a try. It's a model lesson in grace and insight and how to go about something which on the surface might come across as a lazy exercise and make it something else entirely.