"I think we've put the 'Creep' to rest", says Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien.

Nothing personal. "Creep" was the British band's big 1993 single, the punkish ballad that soared to dizzing heights and led the group's debut album, "Pablo Honey", to million-seller status.

The lyrics to "Creep" - "You're so ... special, but I'm a creep!" - struck an instant nerve with lonely, disaffected youth.

"It's a great song. We love it and still play it," O'Brien said in a telephone interview from the band's base in Oxford, England. "But we became known in America as the 'Creep' band instead of Radiohead.'

So what would you do in such a spot? If you are Radiohead, you tour nonstop. Then you relax and take your time to produce the best second album you can.

"But we found you can't force an album," O'Brien said. "We needed to play live. We stopped recording our new record, 'The Bends,' and toured Southeast Asia for two months. We found crowds there latched on quickly to our new material.'

The recently released "The Bends" has the same kind of lyrical despair as "Pablo Honey," though perhaps not as aggressively poignant. Among the lines: "And who are my real friends?" "I wish I could be happy." "I want to be part of the human race."

Many critics have labeled Radiohead, booked at Peabody's Down Under in the Flats tonight, a melancholy band.

"Call us 'sick pop,' O'Brien said. "Well, maybe a little bit melancholy, but with pop overtures and sensibilities."

Singer-lyricist Thom Yorke has an amazing 2 1/2-octave voice. It suddenly soars up an octave on two of the new album's songs, the intense single "Fake Plastic Trees" and "High and Dry." Yorke handles bass lines well, too.

No more processes.
All five of the band's members come from middle-class backgrounds. That's more important than you might think, said O'Brien.

"Look at the history of British bands," he said. "Most are from the middle class, with the stress on higher education. The young people turn to music as a reaction to the middle-class treadmill. They form their own little gangs."

All five also went to the same boy's prep school, Abington School, outside of Oxford. Yorke later studied at Exeter, bassist Colin Greenwood at Cambridge, O'Brien at Manchester University and drummer Phil Selway at Liverpool Polytechnic Institute. Guitarist-organist-synthesizer player Jon Greenwood was signed by the band before he could get very far at Oxford Polytechnic.

"We definitely suffered from that British disease of being reserved," O'Brien said. "But playing live gave us that chance to shake off the shackles and the chains."

Radiohead got together when Yorke saw O'Brien walking across the Abington schoolyard carrying a guitar, a gift for his 16th birthday.

"He thought I looked like the rock star Morrissey - I was a fan of Morrissey's band, the Smiths - and Thom said I should be in a band."

"Creep" got on their first album by accident. "Thom had written the song in college, our producer heard us playing it at rehearsal and said we should record it."

Why the name Radiohead? "A tip of the hat to one of our favorite bands, the Talking Heads," said O'Brien.