The Bends
Radiohead found touring stressful and took a break in January 1996. They sought to distance their new material from the introspective style of "The Bends". Drummer Philip Selway said: "There was an awful lot of soul-searching [on "The Bends"]. To do that again on another album would be excruciatingly boring." Yorke said he did not want to do "another miserable, morbid and negative record", and was "writing down all the positive things that I hear or see. I'm not able to put them into music yet and I don't want to just force it."