Released 26 September 1994 Length 28:23 Artist Radiohead Label XL Recordings | Recorded 1993–1994 My Iron Lung
(1994) The Bends
(1995) Release date 24 October 1994 | |
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Producer John Leckie
Nigel Godrich
Radiohead "My Iron Lung"
(1994) "High and Dry" / "Planet Telex"
(1995) Genres Alternative rock, Heavy metal | ||
The trickster radiohead
My Iron Lung is the third extended play (EP) by English alternative rock band Radiohead, released on 26 September 1994 by Parlophone Records in the United Kingdom and by Capitol Records in the United States. The title track later appeared on the band's second studio album The Bends (1995). The EP also contains outtakes from then-ongoing recording sessions for The Bends, compiling songs that were issued as B-sides on two separate "My Iron Lung" CD singles in the UK and other markets. My Iron Lung was originally released as an EP with all eight songs only in Australia, but it is currently in print worldwide. It is seen as a bridge between the relative simplicity of their debut studio album Pablo Honey (1993) and the greater sonic depth of Radiohead's later work beginning with The Bends. The title track charted at number 24 in the UK, but received little radio attention in the United States.
Contents
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Background
The song "My Iron Lung" was recorded live, in the same 1994 London concert filmed for Live at the Astoria, with only singer Thom Yorke later overdubbed. The song as it appears on the 1994 singles/EP is virtually identical to the version that appeared the next year on The Bends, with only some barely audible changes in mixing levels.
"My Iron Lung" was Radiohead's reaction to "Creep", their massive hit of 1993 which also became something of a millstone for Yorke. The song's caustic, self-reflexive lyrics used the iron lung as a metaphor for the way "Creep" had both sustained the band's life and constrained them ("this is our new song / just like the last one / a total waste of time / my iron lung"). An acoustic version of "Creep" itself appears at the end of the EP.
Other songs on the EP charted a course away from the emotional grunge-pop of Pablo Honey, toward more layered sounds and more inventive guitar parts from Jonny Greenwood, especially evidenced in the ethereal "Punchdrunk Lovesick Singalong" and the Sonic Youth homage "Permanent Daylight", whose vocals ("the easiest way to sell your soul is to carry on believing that you don't exist / it must be hard with your head on backwards") hide in a wall of noise. "The Trickster", like the title track, approaches heavy metal. "Lewis" is musically a punky sequel to Pablo Honey's "How Do You?" but the lyrics may point to "Just" from The Bends, both serving as a warning to seemingly oblivious friends on the verge of breakdown. The acoustic "Lozenge of Love" uses unusual tonality and lyrics taken from Philip Larkin's poem "Sad Steps", while "You Never Wash Up After Yourself" is a quiet, desolate song for guitar and voice.
In Britain and most of the world, this EP was initially available instead as two singles: the first, with a blue-tinted cover, featured the title track backed by "The Trickster", "Punchdrunk Lovesick Singalong", and "Lozenge of Love"; the second, with a red-tinted cover, had "Lewis (Mistreated)", "Permanent Daylight", and "You Never Wash Up After Yourself" as B-sides. "Creep (Acoustic)" (which had also closed the earlier Japanese Itch EP) only appears on the EP release.
Nigel Godrich first worked with Radiohead on this recording, going on to engineer The Bends and to produce their later work. Tracks 2-7 of the EP is now available as the first six tracks on the bonus disc of the collector's edition of The Bends, albeit in a different order ("My Iron Lung" being on the actual album).
Critical reception
Allmusic critic Greg Prato described the tracks as "great outtakes from the sessions for their classic 1995 full-length release The Bends" and stated: "Because of the tracks' consistency and sequencing, it plays like a real album rather than a collection of B-sides and outtakes thrown together haphazardly." Entertainment.ie wrote: "While these off-cuts are inevitably more low-key and experimental than the classics we're all familiar with, the same spirit of anguish [of The Bends] and fragility is still thrillingly familiar."
In popular culture
"My Iron Lung", along with an acoustic version of "Fake Plastic Trees", is featured in the 1995 film Clueless. It is featured as a downloadable song for Rock Band.
Track listing
All tracks written by Radiohead.
Personnel
Songs
1My Iron Lung4:37
2The Trickster4:42
3Lewis (Mistreated)3:20