Tomorrow, Radiohead will release their follow-up to 2001's "Amnesiac." I've listened to the "pre-release" MP3 files over the last couple months, and only recently did I get to hear a copy of the final release. Luckily, I'm not burned out on the record, so I'm really looking forward to it's release.

The press is making a big deal about how this new album is a return to form, but if you ignore the hype and listen to the music, you'll find a lot of the "Kid A" and "Amnesiac" sound in there. It's a great sound... one minute Thom Yorke is crooning along to electronic beats and ambient tones, the next the band is rocking out. And if recent reports are any indication, the upcoming tour shouldn't be missed.

But how will this record find it's place in the History of Radiohead? Will it be seen as a comment on our post-war climate? Will it be considered a classic, or just a good album before they break new ground?

Earlier today, I was visiting the men's room and picked up the copy of Forbes magazine that was lying on the floor. I felt a little alienated by it's contents... all that money-loving business talk can really bother me. Then I realized that this issue was from 1997... wow, instant time warp. The article on rich entertainers was particularly interesting, reporting on Bowie, Spieldberg, among others. The dotcom phenomenon. The Clinton scandals were brewing. America was a different place.

Into this world came Radiohead's "OK Computer." They'll probably never top this record. Not only was the timing perfect for the subject matter (technology increasingly in control of our lives), but it was musically seductive: the compostions, the complex arrangements, the dense musical landscape. This album sunk in slowly, and it seemed to me that it's popularity grew from word of mouth. Critics were hailing it as a brilliant record, but it wasn't receiving much airplay or exposure. I wasn't in much of a position to guage this though. I was living in the foothills of Appalachia with no radio or cable TV.

Once it was nominated for a Grammy, you couldn't get away from it. My garage-rock friends were praising it for it's intensity, my prog-rock friends were loving the epic qualities of songs like "Paranoid Android" and the album's overall concept, and my bandmates were loving the textures and melodies.

"OK Computer" was the warning sign of things to come... "All Hail The Thief" arrives to tell us "I told you so." Are we "fitter, happier, more productive?" Or are we "concerned (but powerless)... a pig, in a cage, on antibiotics"?

I have a habit of putting art in an historical place. The idea is that art should be made for the moment, and with passing time, we can look back, not in nostalgia, but to better understand our place in history. With the release of "All Hail The Thief," now isn't a bad time to look back at "OK Computer." In the process, perhaps we can learn how we got where we are today, with two wars behind us and an uncertain future.