Every great band reaches a critical point in their career and must decide whether to remain the same or to evolve into something else. Without growth comes stasis—often the death knell for artists in their prime. It’s hard to fault bands like U2, who left their classic, platinum sound behind with the daring transformation of Achtung Baby. Their subsequent, continued artistic and commercial success speaks for itself. On the other hand, some bands never recover from their evolutionary changes. Consider REM, for instance, whose sound has devolved into something almost unrecognizable from their early peak.

This all brings me to Radiohead, one of the best and most popular bands of the last decade—two qualities that don’t often go hand-in-hand. They’re also one of my favorite bands (or at least used to be), and with the release of their new release, In Rainbows, they’re worth shouting about again. I just found The Bends on my personal jukebox, and am cueing up “Black Star” to get us started. Let me pour the opening round, drinks on me. Cheers.

Much depends on when you first fall in love with a band—it’s usually that opening sonic volley that grabs you and gives you that first flush, that first fever. Back in the mid-‘90s, during the aftermath of grunge, The Bends seized me by the lapels and made my heart hum. Between Thom Yorke’s soaring voice and their anthemic songs, Radiohead filled an empty niche in the rock world: combining keen intelligence with mature angst in a post-grunge soundscape of symphonic guitars, impressionistic lyricism, and ambitious sweep.

With the release of Kid A in 2000, Radiohead radically reinvented their music, for better or worse (I believe for the worse), and became the ultimate hipsters’ band, as well as, ironically, somehow also finding mainstream success. Surprisingly, Radiohead also became the band du jour at raves and nightclubs. This paradox cuts at the core of who they are, and defines both their new music and their critical rep.

My mention of U2 and REM isn’t a casual one, since Radiohead bridges the distance between both bands in temperament and musical gifts. It’s as if they discovered how to balance U2’s soul-stirring populism with REM’s more elliptic and oblique song canon. It fits that both Michael Stipe and Bono befriended Thom Yorke, even mentoring him at one point on celebrity protocol—if you can imagine that. Whole songs off of Radiohead’s underrated full-length debut, Pablo Honey, even recall Bono and his blokes in their bombast. Check it out, the echoes are there.

When you listen to early Radiohead, meaning their first three records, what’s immediately head turning is Yorke’s mutant angel voice and the incendiary songs themselves: shimmering, mercury-hued classics that tremble with emotion and sound dialed in from some sci-fi, alien frequency. The Bends is not only their most accessible record, but still offers their best collection of individual songs. The Yorke template for open-heart, surgical balladry begins here with “Fake Plastic Trees” and “High and Dry.”

And, of course, this is followed up by OK Computer in 1997, which rightfully made Radiohead a phenomenon. Still considered one of the Great Records of the last few decades, this suite of dense, multi-layered songcraft overflows with electric passion and alienation. Like The Wall for Pink Floyd, everything comes together here in a masterwork of concept and execution. This is post-apocalyptic music, rarely bettered in its operatic estrangement with the world. Chiseled, laser guitars spear the melodies, and the dubbed vocal tracks overlap in echoed catharsis. It’s as complex and orchestral a piece as anything Queen ever recorded. And best yet, it is prog-rock without the wanking, interminable solos.

These songs depict an Orwellian nightmare of encroaching technology and the rise of the authoritarian, corporate-owned state. The record predates the Bush administration, but still foretells his disastrous reign with chilling accuracy. War is Peace and Freedom is War—do these absurd slogans sound familiar?