Radiohead and the Global Movement for Change by Rose Phil;

Author:Rose, Phil; [Rose, Phil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Published: 2015-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Total Disintegration: “Climbing Up the Walls”

Of the recording’s chilling ninth track Thom Yorke suggests (in Paytress 2005, 44), “This is about the unspeakable.” With its bleakly reverberating drum, the dissonant buzzing timbre of its low-pitched Novation Bass Station synthesizer, and the strange echoes of its cold and frightening sound effects, we enter what is doubtless OK Computer’s most toxic scene. Also evident from the song’s minor tonality and the bizarre effects it employs on Yorke’s doubled and troubled voice, it is as though we are left alone with Cosmic Man at the conclusion of “Exit Music (for a film).” The imagery evoked in the lines “a pick in the ice” and “15 blows to the back of the head” helps to recount the tale of a violent murderer, whose “toys” have slipped from the “basement” to the attic—identifying himself as he does with the technological extension that is his weapon. Lending substance to the idea of a “dangerous neighbourhood” (another formulation expressed in Esperanto in the OK Computer CD booklet), Yorke recounts how he was working in a mental hospital during the time that the UK government was returning mentally unstable patients to the streets, suggesting that “It’s one of the scariest things to happen in this country, because a lot of them weren’t just harmless” (Paytress 2005, 44).

The apparent inhumanity of this heartless killer reminds us of that associated with the unfeeling and misanthropic android, whom the sound effects heard following the first chorus also serve to conjure, particularly given that they seem to emulate a squealing little piggy. As he begins the last verse of the song with its reference to “the kids,” we are again reminded of “Exit Music (for a film),” where, in the spirit of Mercutio, we experienced a deranged-sounding Cosmic Man’s complete and utter giving over to violence. In that tragic context driving Juliet to suicide, his madness here again conjures visions of bringing the kids down along with himself in the coming plane crash. In this relation, of all the album’s songs, the printed lyrics for “Climbing Up the Walls” are the most debauched in presentation, and Yorke’s substitution of the word “lock” on the recording for the printed word “tuck” adds to the general chill:

Lock the kids in safe tonight

Shut the eyes in the cupboard

I’ve got the smell of a local man

Whose got the loneliest feeling.

That the scene is not merely fear-laden, but includes also a significant component of the auxiliary affect dissmell, is evident both musically and lyrically. In this regard, Lucas draws our attention to some useful summary expressions describing dissmell’s effects, along with the position we are meant to adopt in relation to the scene we are here witnessing: “Dissmell suggests, ‘I don’t want to get near’: ‘I have absolutely no desire for the repulsive, stinking object, no positive affect is possible, and distance must be maximized’” (Lucas 2007, 191). That this particular stench is “of a local man with the loneliest feeling” carries considerable irony, and reflects McLuhan’s

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