Risk-Taking Is Just Part of the Game Plan for Radiohead

Radiohead’s best-known song, “Creep,” is an apotheosis of self-loathing, and the English band’s enigmatic second album, “The Bends,” is “all about suffocation,” as the group’s singer Thom Yorke puts it.

The last place you’d expect such an acerbic outfit to find inspiration is in R.E.M., the most idealistic of rock bands. But that’s what happened when Radiohead served as R.E.M.’s opening act on U.S. and European tours earlier this year.

“It was great for us,” says Yorke, 27. “ ‘Cause it made us see, ‘Hang on, you actually can do this on your own terms. It is possible.’ And that just completely recharged us.”

It might seem strange that Radiohead--which will play the KROQ “Almost Acoustic Christmas” concerts on Sunday and Monday at the Universal Amphitheatre--would need recharging after exceeding all expectations with its debut album, “Pablo Honey,” in 1993, thanks largely to the immediate enshrinement of “Creep” as an alternative-rock anthem.

But this band has a built-in contrary streak that’s sometimes stronger than its ambition. Consider what happened when the group--Yorke, guitarist-keyboardist Jonny Greenwood, guitarist Ed O’Brien, bassist Colin Greenwood and drummer Phil Selway--started to record “The Bends” last year.

“It was a nightmare,” says Yorke, speaking by phone from a concert tour stop in Sweden. “We had all these good songs, but as soon as we had to present them to anybody else, we just freaked out and didn’t talk to each other. . . . We were scared of every single note that we played.

“Eventually we sorted it out by just going out again on the road and playing the songs in front of people directly and realizing, ‘Oh, they’re actually quite good.’

“I think that a lot of it was us claiming our own territory emotionally and creatively, and sort of becoming stronger as a band and coming out the end of it communicating a lot better than we ever did before.”

Lacking a catchy follow-up to “Creep,” “The Bends” hasn’t approached the half-million sales figure of “Pablo Honey.” But its blend of uneasy mood and musical grandeur earned it strong reviews and demonstrated that the group has more in its arsenal than a knack for novelty.

But Yorke, whose conversation is a blend of snideness and sincerity, warns fans not to expect more of the same.

“It seems a lot of artists are really paranoid and don’t really take risks at all. I find that really depressing. . . . We just can’t bear the notion of repeating ourselves. You basically have to have an implicit lack of reverence for what you’re doing. You have to want to sort of destroy it and move on to do the next thing.”

So maybe Radiohead isn’t that far from idealistic after all. Yorke says the band is eager to end its year of hard touring and begin the next album, which he hopes to record at a remote site in England.

“I think the most beautiful music comes from isolation,” he says. “Radiohead seems to expend a lot of energy and effort cutting ourselves off, so the music that happens has the beauty that we’re trying to look for. I know that ‘beauty’ is not a terribly descriptive word, but that’s the only word I’ve got really.”

* Radiohead plays at the “KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas” concerts on Sunday and Monday at the Universal Amphitheatre, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, 6:15 p.m. Sold out. (818) 980-9421. Concerts will be broadcast live on KROQ-FM (106.7).