With all of the Drudge-sanctioned coverage of the release of In Rainbows, you may have noticed something: Radiohead is one of those “IMPORTANT” bands. Now, we live in an era that has digested and forgotten what it means to experience “important” music. We have neither the attention span nor the sense of history to appreciate art and some critics are more pessimistic than others. On the right, Alan Bloom lamented, with great hysteria in The Closing of the American Mind, the advent and development of jazz, R&B, and Rock & Roll. On the left, intellectual titan Theodor Adorno, in his essay “The Culture Industry,” strenuously argued there hadn’t been an admirable piece of music produced since the work of Haydn (and Adorno reserved intense vitriol for Beethoven). But I digress.

In case you haven’t plugged in to their work, let me offer a synopsis of their corpus. Radiohead started as one of many Brit-rock bands during a flurry of rock activity in the UK during the early ‘90s. Their first record is remembered by the uninitiated for a single called “Creep,” which became a staple on alternative radio, MTV’s 120 Minutes, and made it onto the soundtrack for the movie Clueless.

Their sophomore release, The Bends, coincided with the early-‘90s Britpop invasion of Blur, Elastica, Pulp, and, of course, Oasis. Thom Yorke’s furtive vocals, however, distinguished Radiohead’s jangle from the cocksure swagger of Oasis’ one-two punch of Noel and Liam (on their debut, Definitely Maybe). And while Oasis perfected soaring and accessible ’90s arena rock, The Bends hinted at the obscure road-less-taken path that Radiohead took in subsequent years.

Enter one of the touchstones of the ‘90s: Radiohead’s 1997 album, OK Computer. It’s hard to overemphasize its impact. It ranks alongside Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral, My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, Nirvana’s Nevermind, and P.J. Harvey’s To Bring You My Love as the most important records of that decade. Sonically adventurous and drenched in reverb that recalled the psychedelic dabbling of Pink Floyd, Radiohead crafted a record that heralded the arrival of post-rock (later typified by acts like Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You Black Emperor).

Computer’s foreboding and alienation was prelude to Radiohead’s most obscure and innovative record to date, Kid A. It is their masterpiece, and though resistant to initial contact (it’s quite icy and hard to process) has become a definitive statement of post 9/11 unease. The record wrapped itself in isolation and enforced its alienation through sparse electronic programming. Hail to the Thief followed in 2003 and was a more organic turn. They stressed “real” forms of percussion (over electronic) and produced a very thick, primal sound that seemed to be the rumblings of tribes stuck between the worlds of Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are and Kinbote’s Zembla (in Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire).