I’m pretty sure everyone with some ounce of pop culture awareness recognizes ‘Creep’ by Radiohead. Maybe you’ve scraped the surface of their discography and added ‘Karma Police’ or ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ to your breakup playlist. Or you’re like me, and debate which Radiohead album is the best with your friends. Radiohead has 42.8 million monthly listeners on Spotify. They’re ranked 78th in the world on the platform. The British band rose to popularity in the mid-90’s within the alt-rock Britpop genres, notorious for lead singer Thom Yorke’s powerful vocals.
I’m fairly obsessed with everything 90’s rock, so I fell in love with Radiohead in high school. I listened to their 1995 album The Bends from start to finish pretty regularly during my junior year. But I’m a proud playlist girl — meaning I like to curate my own blends of artists and vibes. So, I’m offering some of my favorite lesser known, Radiohead-adjacent artists.
That’s right: I don’t gatekeep.
Catherine Wheel is another British guitar band emerging in the early 90s, at the tail end of the shoegaze era (I’ll be back with more to say on shoegaze in the future). They emulate the ethereal guitar sounds of the earlier genre, but transition into harder rock and Britpop sounds. Their 1992 studio album Ferment made a name for the band with hits like ‘Black Metallic,’ ‘Texture,’ and ‘Indigo is Blue.’ The band features a wailing distorted guitar, and Rob Dickonson’s echoey vocals are, in my opinion, up there with Thom Yorke’s. But I’d argue that, what Radiohead possesses in edgy, mournful themes, Wheel replaces it with rage and seduction. If you like Radiohead’s ‘My Iron Lung,’ or ‘The Bends,’ you’ll love ‘The Nude’ and ‘Heal’ by Wheel.
In songs like ‘My Iron Lung,’ Yorke’s voice transitions between his melancholic, whispery head voice to a powerful wail. It’s Radiohead’s dynamics that makes their songs tug at your soul. If you love the punchy rock bridges and choruses that slice Radiohead’s melancholic verses, you should check out Hum. The band, hailing from Illinois, falls within the alt-rock genre, but features shoe-gazey production, and their crashing drums and heavy distortion borders on nu-metal. Their space-themed album, You’d Prefer An Astronaut, released in 1995, featuring hit song ‘Stars,’ with 25 million listens on Spotify. But if you’re a big Radiohead fan, you’ll love ‘Why I Like The Robins’ and ‘I Hate It Too’ too.
If you like Radiohead’s more depressing stuff, you’ll love Starflyer 59. Singer-songwriter Jason Martin is from Southern California, and credits his love for British shoegaze and space rock as inspiration for his music. Starflyer 59’s 1998 album The Fashion Focus features the same dystopian, unearthly sounds as OK Computer, with lyrics that are equally as hopeless and edgy. I’d recommend ‘I Drive A Lot’ and ‘Fell In Love At 22’ to any exhausted college student. But you should also check out ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ and ‘She Only Knows.’
Last but not least, if you haven’t listened to PJ Harvey’s 2000 album Stories From The City or Stories From The Sea, you’re missing out. Yorke is featured on ‘This Mess We’re In,’ and his harmonies with Harvey are haunting. My favorite song from the album is ‘You Said Something.’ Harvey also covered the Rolling Stones’ ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ with Bjork at the 1994 BRIT Awards, and it was iconic.
More recs to come, folks.
~ Alayna Blier `26
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