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 Nobody expected The Bends from Radiohead. When the band’s second album was released in 1995, pretty much everyone assumed this would be the last we'd hear from the British quintet that gave us the grunge-era hit "Creep" two years earlier. After all, Radiohead’s debut album, Pablo Honey, wasn’t all that good, and their music had all the earmarks of a period band with one big hit.

But The Bends didn’t sound anything like Pablo Honey. And 1995 Radiohead didn’t sound much like 1993 Radiohead. With artsier music and more oblique lyrics, the album marked a major creative and stylistic leap for the band. From the opening hums of "Planet Telex" to the haunting closing track "Street Spirit (Fade Out)," The Bends, though few spotted it at the time, was the exact moment where one of the greatest bands of the past 25 years got serious. - Ultimate Classic Rock