Radiohead: Pablo Honey

Pablo Honey

Best song: Blow Out

Worst song: How Do You

Overall grade: 4

This is the first Radiohead album; the one that almost everyone ignores. Before I decided to review them, I’d heard it, but I’d never properly listened to it or given it the time and attention I have all the later Radiohead albums. Now that I have, I’ve realised I enjoy it a whole lot, nearly as much as The Bends. It may be just a bunch of 90s alt rock tunes that sound pretty similar to hundreds of other bands of the time, but it’s very high class 90s alt rock, and I’d definitely take it over anything by, say, Weezer or Beck.

Part of this, I think, is down to the sheer charisma that Thom Yorke exudes all the time. It doesn’t seem like he puts any effort into this, but something about him just makes me want to listen to him. Radiohead’s music has always had this great quality of drawing you in and making you want more.

The songs are a mixed bag. On the one hand, there’s the band’s first hit single ‘Creep’, which deserves its status. Those dead notes Johnny Greenwood plays really took me by surprise when I first heard them, and they still give me a thrill. There’s a great interplay between the vocals and the guitars; ditto for the opener ‘You’ (part of which is in 11/8 time! Yay!) ‘ On the other hand, there’s the following track, ‘How Do You’, which is a good example of punk done badly. A bit of shouting and a lot of excessive guitar noise and people are supposed to be too busy headbanging to realise that it sucks.

Pablo Honey is definitely better when it gets more personal. I’m a big fan of ‘Stop Whispering’, which definitely has this quality. I swear it’s being performed for me and me alone, right now, rather than 20 years ago in the middle of a recording studio. And then there’s ‘Thinking About You’, a short acoustic song with a nice organ part. And also ‘Anyone Can Play Guitar’ has a great bass line, as well as the moment where Yorke sings ‘I wanna be wanna be wanna be Jim Morrison!’ which might be the only moment in Radiohead history where he sounds like he’s letting go and not carefully controlling every note.

Unfortunately, one thing I notice all the way through is that the band really haven’t figured out how to write a decent instrumental break yet. In addition, the album certainly gets a bit samey in the second half, like in ‘Vegetable’, which is just bleh, but there are enough good moments to keep it from getting boring, like the cool marching drums part in the coda to ‘I Can’t’.

I’m someone who thinks endings are really important. The final track can make or break a record for me, and this one here certainly makes it. ‘Blow Out’ is the clearest sign pointing towards where Radiohead would go next, with its jazzy influences and its clever use of dynamics and buildups. It gives the sense that even over the past 42 minutes, the band have matured, and are getting ready to become something really special.