Radiohead's second album transformed them from Britpop also-rans into something approaching visionaries, marrying Thom Yorke's anxiety attacks to guitars that actually knew how to breathe. John Leckie's production allowed space between the angst, while songs like Fake Plastic Trees and Street Spirit (Fade Out) proved the band could sustain emotional weight beyond Creep's self-loathing.

The blueprint for OK Computer sits here in embryo, though The Bends remains their most conventionally guitar-driven statement, all coiled tension and release without the later abstractions.