adiohead is a major rock band, true; but there's a big difference between Radiohead's music and the music of other major rock bands. There's something insular, solitary, and isolated about the band's oeuvre and, indeed, its fans. Their anthems aren't littered with slogans that dudes with lighters and no shirts yell at the top of their lungs; their choruses don't inspire much dancing. The image I have of a typical Radiohead fan is a teenager in his or her room, holed up from the world, listening to OK Computer on a Discman, studying every nuanced warble in Thom Yorke's voice, and jumping for joy when the metal part of "Paranoid Android" kicks in. Radiohead is, indeed, a solitary pleasure. So it's no wonder that one of these loners, classical pianist and die-hard Radiohead fan, Christopher O'Riley, would figure out that Radiohead's intricate and beautiful compositions would fit perfectly into the realm of classical piano.


True Love Waits takes fifteen of Radiohead's best-known compositions—from "Airbag" to "Knives Out" to "Let Down" to "Fake Plastic Trees" to "Karma Police"—and recreates them for solo piano. Yep, that's right: solo piano. There are no drums, no keyboards, no guitars, no vocals—and only one piano. Take the noise and screams out of most rock music and all you've got left is a bad imitation of Doors or Sex Pistol songs. Luckily, Radiohead's true strength lies in their songwriting; the reason some people didn't like Kid A and Amnesiac was because those albums (in their view) relied too much on electronic trickery, forcing the album's interesting songs to serve as a mere backdrop for experimentation. Hence, for some, O'Riley's pared-down rendition of songs like "Knives Out" and "Everything in Its Right Place" should come as a welcome surprise, revealing those songs to be as well-crafted and as beautiful as anything on OK Computer.


Moreover, even the OK Computer songs O'Riley performs here sound relatively fresh. It's always interesting to hear familiar tunes performed in a different way. Performed without vocals or guitar, songs like "Karma Police" and "Exit Music (for a Film)" sound so damn sad, much sadder than the originals, where the sadness was tempered by the throbbing beat, haunting background wails, and (especially) ironic lyrics.


And that's the true difference between Radiohead and O'Riley: irony. Radiohead's music is excellent, but their public image and even their recording methods are built around a postmodern idea of what a rock band should be. They are a serious band who knows that being a serious band is just another image, another commodity. They know that, if they rebel from this image, they simply create another image, another stereotype. So they take the third route—the ironic route. They deliberately fuck up perfectly good melodies by throwing in haunting background wails or digital scraping noises; they throw in lyrics that poke fun at the very concept of rock lyrics; they create a song using a Stephen Hawking monotone Mac voice. Their music, classic though it might be, is shaped in and through irony.


O'Riley's True Love Waits, on the other hand, is Radiohead music performed by a classical pianist, an artist who takes his music seriously. In interviews, O'Riley has been adamant about the fact that this work is NOT any sort of pandering to the masses; he is a true fan, and like any true fan, he cherishes the songs for what they are—works that he can reinterpret only if he treats the originals with the proper respect. O'Riley might understand Radiohead's unwillingness to play up their roles as media icons; he might even celebrate their willingness to challenge rock music stereotypes. But his goal here is musical, not cultural. This classical musician ably renders Radiohead's compositions into works for solo piano. By doing that, he removes much of what makes Radiohead Radiohead. Ironic, isn't it?