Recorded in 1997, before most of us had email, and somehow it already knew.
On the surface it’s 90s alternative rock. Underneath it’s an album about what it feels like to be a person inside too many systems at once — sung by Thom Yorke sounding faintly resigned to it.
“Fitter, happier, more productive” is a two-minute monologue in a text-to-speech voice listing the attributes of a well-adjusted modern person. It’s the most unsettling track about optimisation culture I’ve heard, and it was made before optimisation culture fully existed.
I keep coming back to this album when I think about how technology keeps promising connection and keeps delivering a particular kind of tiredness. The shape of that tension hasn’t really changed in 25 years. It’s just louder now.