OK Computer: OKNOTOK 1997-2017

All [of the unreleased songs] were recorded around the time of OK Computer; all are unimpeachably first-rate; and yet, all were sensibly left off the original. Nevertheless, they complete the picture of one of rock's greatest bands cresting their first creative peak.

It's an album that at times sounds like it wants to smash your face to pieces, sometimes your heart. It's beautiful, horrible, bleak, spiteful, overwhelmed, overwhelming--a cry of panic ,despair, anxiety in the face of accelerating modernity. .... All three [previously unreleased tracks] are excellent in their way. [Aug 2017, p.100]

It is untouchable and timeless.

This reissue (effectively 2008’s Collector’s Edition plus three excellent unreleased songs) proves that Radiohead’s reputation derives from their music’s depthless humanity, not its instrumentation.

OK Computer never stopped sounding timeless. In its new form as OKNOTOK, unreleased songs feed off beloved B-sides, forming a web that supports the concrete themes of the original album so as to make its points even sharper.

This remaster makes it glisten like the first time you heard it, while three unreleased tracks show that their vision didn't properly take shape until well into recording. [Aug 2017, p.113]

What no one, including Radiohead, did was make another album that really sounds like OK Computer. Which is another reason why it doesn’t appear to have dated at all.

“I Promise,” “Man Of War,” and “Lift” are the most exciting, crucial elements of this deluxe edition. ... [The B-sides are] a perfect counterpart to the three new tracks, and point towards Radiohead's convention-defying next chapter of Kid A and Amnesiac. [Aug 2017, p.44]

Years removed from its source, its impact is multiplied tenfold. In 1996, it was a path towards adult-contemporary pop radio; today, it’s an exquisitely faded Polaroid.

There was little to nothing as picturesque and vivid in major-label rock as OK Computer in 1997, and it’s debatable if there’s been anything since. ... If OK Computer seemed to wither over its runtime, there is a more consistent, punchier quality to the second album sequenced out on OKNOTOK–full of big guitars, sweeping sentimentality, and drier wit. Here, its bold half-ideas, this many years on, sound better than ever, and find a new coherence.

All three [previously unreleased tracks] are worthy additions to the Radiohead canon, enhancing and enriching an all time classic album rather than diluting it.

The remasters find some new glimmers of clarity and sparkle, particularly on guitar sounds, but aren’t startlingly different from past versions. ... After 20 years, it’s clear that “OK Computer” was the album on which Radiohead most strongly embraced and, simultaneously, confronted the legacy of the Beatles.

The main draw here is the first release of three songs with myth-like status among the infatuated. ... There are a series of rough demos and what sounds like soundboard recordings of various sections of Paranoid Android in the first flushes of development (magnificently wigged-out, whirling dervish-style organ solo, come on down!) and a bare-bones take on Airbag, again featuring embryonic lyrics.