The Bends combines guitar songs and ballads, with more restrained arrangements and cryptic lyrics than Radiohead's debut album, Pablo Honey (1993).

"[3] After Radiohead finished recording Pablo Honey, Yorke played the co-producer Paul Q. Kolderie a demo tape of new material with the working title The Benz.

"[11] "Planet Telex" began with a drum loop taken from another song, the B-side "Killer Cars", and was written and recorded in a single evening at RAK.

[11] "High and Dry" was recorded the previous year at Courtyard Studios, Oxfordshire, by Radiohead's live sound engineer, Jim Warren.

[11] Work resumed for two weeks in July at the Manor studio in Oxfordshire, where Radiohead completed songs including "Bones", "Sulk" and "The Bends".

[27][28][29] The critic Simon Reynolds wrote that The Bends brought an "English art rock element" to the fore of Radiohead's sound.

He likened "The Bends" to the late music of the Beatles, described "My Iron Lung" as hard rock, and noted more subdued sounds on "Bullet Proof ...

[23] Rolling Stone described The Bends as a "mix of sonic guitar anthems and striking ballads", with lyrics evoking a "haunted landscape" of sickness, consumerism, jealousy and longing.

[32] The journalist Mac Randall described the lyrics as "a veritable compendium of disease, disgust and depression" that nonetheless become uplifting in the context of the "inviting" and "powerful" arrangements.

[40] According to Randall, "My Iron Lung" transitions from a "jangly" opening hook to a "McCartney-esque verse melody" and "pulverising guitar explosions" in the bridge.

[44] For The Bends, Yorke and Donwood hired a cassette camera and filmed objects including road signs, packaging and street lights.

Instead, they filmed a CPR mannequin, which Donwood described as having "a facial expression like that of an android discovering for the first time the sensations of ecstasy and agony, simultaneously".

[46] The A&R VP Perry Watts-Russel said EMI did not pursue radio play as "My Iron Lung" was intended for fans rather than as the lead single for The Bends.

[47] The Bends was released at the height of Britpop, when the British music charts were dominated by bands such as Oasis and Blur, and initially made little impact.

[64] Colin Greenwood wrote later: "I spoke to so many music writers who'd received The Bends as a promo, left it to gather dust on top of their PC tower, and hadn't bothered to play it until word of mouth nudged them.

[14] "Street Spirit (Fade Out)", released in January 1996, reached number five on the UK singles chart, surpassing "Creep" and demonstrating that Radiohead were not one-hit wonders.

"[67] The American tour included a performance at the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas concert at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, alongside Oasis, Alanis Morissette, No Doubt and Porno for Pyros.

[14] That August, Radiohead toured as the opening act for Alanis Morissette,[70] performing early versions of songs from their next album, OK Computer.

[22] Dave Morrison of Select wrote that it "captures and clarifies a much wider trawl of moods than Pablo Honey" and praised Radiohead as "one of the UK's big league, big-rock assets".

Chuck Eddy of Spin deemed much of the album "nodded-out nonsense mumble, not enough concrete emotion",[78] while Kevin McKeough from the Chicago Tribune panned Yorke's lyrics as "self-absorbed" and the music as overblown and pretentious.

[71] In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau wrote that the guitar parts and expressions of angst were skilful and natural, but lacked depth: "The words achieve precisely the same pitch of aesthetic necessity as the music, which is none at all.

"[79] In the Los Angeles Times, Sandy Morris praised Yorke as "almost as enticingly enigmatic as Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, though of a more delicate constitution".

[6] The journalist Rob Sheffield recalled that The Bends "shocked the world", elevating Radiohead from "pasty British boys to a very 70s kind of UK art-rock godhead".

[30] Two years after its release, the Guardian critic Caroline Sullivan wrote that The Bends had taken Radiohead from "indie one hit-wonder" into the "premier league of respected British rock bands".

[91] The Rolling Stone journalist Jordan Runtagh wrote in 2012 that The Bends was "a musically dense and emotionally complex masterwork that erased their one-hit-wonder status forever".

[92] The writer Nick Hornby wrote in 2000 that, with The Bends, Radiohead "found their voice ... No other contemporary band has managed to mix such a cocktail of rage, sarcasm, self-pity, exquisite tunefulness and braininess.

"[93] In Pitchfork, Scott Plagenhoef wrote that The Bends presented a "more approachable and loveable version" of Radiohead and remained many fans' favourite album.

[26] The Bends influenced a generation of British and Irish acts, including Coldplay, Keane, James Blunt, Muse, Athlete, Elbow, Snow Patrol, Kodaline, Turin Brakes and Travis.

[24] In 2006, The Observer named The Bends one of "the 50 albums that changed music", saying it had popularised an "angst-laden falsetto ... a thoughtful opposite to the chest-beating lad-rock personified by Oasis", which "eventually coalesced into an entire decade of sound".

[110] In April 2016, as a result of an agreement with the trade group Impala, WMG transferred Radiohead's back catalogue to XL Recordings.