Radiohead Albums for Different Moods and Listening Habits

For warm grooves and interlocking guitars. The beat on “15 Step” keeps skipping forward as the guitar slips in around it. Stay for “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi,” where the guitar parts pile up and the song seems to lift off.

For the days you want big guitar melodies. “Just” keeps tightening around its riff, while the closing “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” draws you in with a guitar figure that barely lets up. The two songs show how much the band can do at either end of its guitar sound.

For a burst of early ’90s alternative rock. “You” opens the debut with a guitar figure that soon gives way to full-band volume. In “Creep,” the blunt guitar crashes before the chorus are as much of a hook as the melody.

For a late-night listen when you can hear the quiet parts. “Daydreaming” gives a small piano figure time to unfold as strings gather around it. By the time the album reaches “True Love Waits,” the voice and piano carry almost all the weight.

For an uninterrupted listen when you want the mood to keep shifting under you. “Paranoid Android” swings from busy guitars to a hushed choral passage and back into a racket. Midway through the album, the computer voice of “Fitter Happier” makes the songs on either side feel more uneasy.

For a restless mood. “2 + 2 = 5” winds itself up from a murmur into a full-band rush. The clipped electronic rhythms on “Backdrifts” bring a different kind of tension to a record that keeps changing pace.

For listening to the rhythm first. Try following the overlapping patterns in “Bloom,” then hear how the bass and drums leave pockets of space for the voice in “Lotus Flower.” The loops make this short record worth another pass, especially if you spent the first one following the singing.

For headphones and a taste for unfamiliar sounds. The voice in “Everything in Its Right Place” gets sliced up and sent back over the keyboard chords. A few tracks later, the horns on “The National Anthem” make an entirely different kind of noise over an insistent bass figure.

For when you want to follow a record into its stranger corners. The piano in “Pyramid Song” seems to suspend the pulse, and the distorted voice on the next track, “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors,” cuts through a much harsher beat. Humphrey Lyttelton’s trumpet on the closing “Life in a Glasshouse” gives the album one last turn.