Representing how all of these different things affected them deeply and personally. With a very vast and complex seemingly never ending highway intertwined with express subways and the text “lost child”. This is also reflected in the artwork for the album. All these instruments and sounds are really just the infrastructure for something bigger in a song. Or even referring to infrastructure in a physical sense, speaking about automation, highways, banking, and surveillance. The structure of mentality, referring to the mindset of a human being. While in some ways the album was very much about technology, if it was really boiled down to one topic it would be best described as infrastructure. Life was rapidly changing around them while they watched it unfold from a tour bus. This really affected Thom and the rest of the band. Phones were begun smaller and wireless, the internet was beginning to take shape, and life was moving at a thousand miles a minute. During this time the age of the information really began to take shape.
They were so popular in fact that the album was supported by over 200 shows. While it was unable to recreate the massive phenomenon that was Creep, their sophomore effort The Bends brought in thousands of new fans and critical acclaim for their approach to rock in the age where bands like Nirvana and their wave of grunge had begun to die down. In the explosion of grunge and shoegaze thanks to bands like Nirvana and My Bloody Valentine, there was simply no room for what NME described as a “lily-livered excuse for a rock band.” While the release of their first album was not deemed a success the massive amount of success that Creep did was enough to support their second album. When the song Creep blew up into the mainstream, no one really expected them to be anything other than a one hit wonder. Radiohead has been a household name for rock enthusiasts since the early 90’s.