You will never see a band that dramatically changes their styles throughout their career like Radiohead. The calmness and pop sense of their first album, Pablo Honey, has been never used in the band since 1997 . And now the band is less focused on making money off singles, and more focused on protecting the environment and making the perfect record.
Even though "Pablo Honey" is nowhere near my favorite Radiohead record, it still does have some good songs that could have been good on Radiohead's 1995 album "The Bends. My favorite song on the album is "Thinking About You", the song on "Pablo Honey" is an acoustic song sang beautifully by Thom Yorke, but fans of this record will be interested at the fact that it was a hard and aggressive track on the bands "Drill EP", I've never heard the "aggressive" version but I'm sure this version is much better. Thom singing about a simple relationship, which he sings about for most of the album, and the song contains some catchy lines: "I'm playing with myself/why do you care/ when the other men are far far better". The chorus in this song is also very good, and probably the 3rd best on the album. A good song that defines the album, it's about a relationship, its not to aggressive, and it has some good ideas.
Many people in 1993 considered Radiohead one hit wonders a claim we know now is completely ridiculous because of the other five Radiohead albums. The song that was the one hit is the song "Creep", which is my second favorite song of the album. The song that the band is reluctant and almost never plays live now starts out with a calm intro with Thom sort of mumbling his vocals which in the opening sequence are very well done, Then Thom screams "I wish I was special, You are so very special", to edit the "F" word out of that sequence. He sings the chorus with little or no emotion for the first time, but the next few lines he builds up more energy for the instruments so the chorus sounds more aggressive. The chorus, which made the song to sad for radio, but perfect for MTV comes next and it, is very well done. Thom sings about a relationship and says: "I'm a creep/I'm a weirdo/What the hell am I doing here? / I don't belong here." The breakdown in this song really contains two parts Thom screaming after the second chorus, and running through the vocals once again. I like the first breakdown because it adds a sense of emotion to the song, which makes it a very good track.
“Stop Whispering”, sounds exactly like a U2 song but it has Radiohead flavor to it. The beat to the song is very simple and lady back, but the chorus, which is, sang at a high-note pitch, which makes it a cool song. The surrounding lines in this song are pretty dull and song softly be Thom Yorke, the lines sound kind of like a call out to society. In the breakdown you can’t understand Thom vocals, which leads into a mini-guitar solo, which leads into Thom shouting the chorus in this song. Overall, I give this song credit for having a very good structure and somehow throwing all the ideas it has together in making a song.
So you’ve heard my three favorite songs on the bands debut album. Now I will move onto songs that I thought weren’t as impressive. On “Vegetable”, like many songs on this album you have a lot of soft vocals and riffing guitar building onto a monstrous breakdown. On “Vegetable” you have this for the first couple minutes in the song, which are a complete waste in my opinion. And then you finally have the vocals come out of there shell as Thom screams: “I am not a vegetable/I will not control myself”, the lyrics make no sense but Thom putting so emotion into the vocals makes the song work.
“Lurgee”, is a nice and relaxed song. It is the one soft song on the album that I would recommend Thom vocals have more emotion in. The beat is pretty cool, but the over-used guitar riff gets old in this short song. The song kind of plays as an interlude on a twelve-track album.
These are some examples of types of songs you would find on Pablo Honey. The basic structure is that you are going to have whiny and soft song with hard to understand vocals mount into a huge breakdown with Thom exploding lyrically. The chorus, to drives other songs on this album such as “Anyone Can Play Guitar”, and the song tends to be dull after you’ve heard the same chorus many times.
The thing you have to realize is that Radiohead aren’t as instrumentally advanced as they are today. A lot of these songs are going to sound the same to you, such as “Prove Yourself and Ripcord”, but most rock bands albums today sound the same anyway. This is the common MTV beach party album, and if you like top-40 albums of up’s and downs I would recommend this to you. But if you like the later Radiohead material, there is no way this will meet your expectations.
3/5
