Released: 1993
Tracks: You; Creep; How Do You?; Stop Whispering; Thinking About You; Anyone Can Play Guitar; Ripcord; Vegetable; Prove Yourself; I Can’t; Lurgee; Blow Out
Best track: Blow Out
Tracks to skip: Vegetable, I Can’t, Lurgee
I reviewed
OK Computer yesterday and as it turns out, today’s review goes back a few years to Radiohead’s debut album, Pablo Honey. When talking about Radiohead albums in general, this one usually gets shafted. “Oh, everything from The Bends on is great…” The band doesn’t even play songs from this album anymore, save for the occasional Creep. This attitude is really unfortunate, by the band and fans alike, because this isn’t a horrible album by any means. I mean, yeah, it’s certainly not as great as the stuff that has come since, but that’s no reason to outright cast it away.
Pablo Honey is best known for the unexpected hit single, Creep. Some people still only know Radiohead by this song and (somehow) don’t realize they’ve done anything since. It has still retained its catchiness all these years and it doesn’t annoy me anywhere near as much as it used to in 1993. It’s a good song, not the best on the disc (about in the middle somewhere), but it’s certainly not anything I ever skip. I have to say, I love having this uncensored version as opposed to what was released in the US initially. The rest of the songs aren’t as well-known, but they probably should be. Songs like You, Stop Whispering, Prove Yourself and especially Blow Out are all excellent songs. Blow Out is definitely my favorite here – a well-written song with some unexpected turns and it definitely points to the sound and songs of The Bends.
I really love that ending “jam” in Stop Whispering. Slightly bit whiny in the vocals throughout, but the jam shows that these guys could create some seriously cool and intense music out of “noise”. Overall the band has some pretty good choruses here, definitely catchy. I also think that on all of these songs the music itself is consistently solid. The main parts that annoy me are Thom Yorke’s vocals. Mostly they’re tolerable, but he frequently gets pretty whiny. It’s a minor complaint, but I can see people being turned off by it. Then again, he still sings this way, so if you can’t stand his voice there’s a good chance you won’t get into much of their material. My main problem with this album on the whole is that most of the songs are just way too short. Songs like You, Thinking About You and especially Prove Yourself end way too soon. These songs should have definitely been fleshed out more. A few of these songs are only decent, stuff like How Do You? and Ripcord, and of the three skippers listed above, they’re not outright horrible (well, Lurgee just kind of plods along) but they just sound like throwaways.
I think Pablo Honey is a good start. Some minor annoyances and some “meh” songs, but nothing is outright *bad*. On the whole it doesn’t deserve the reputation it gets. There are some true gems here and shockingly they’re not called Creep! If you like Radiohead’s “guitar” music then you should check this out. I enjoy it.
Rating: 83
In 2009 this album (along with The Bends & OK Computer) was reissued with a second disc featuring all of the album’s B-sides, some BBC sessions and most importantly the band’s long out of print debut EP, Drill. Every one of these songs on the second disc are very hard to find and you can’t even download them from iTunes like you can the B-sides from the rest of their albums. The rare studio and live songs fit in nicely with the quality of the songs on the album proper.
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