Listening to the album’s lyrics it is clear the main influence for songwriter Thom Yorke is the American grunge movement of the early 1990s with the majority of the Yorke’s lyrics portraying the default grunge mantra of teenage angst and isolation, similar to post-punk American bands such as Pixies and Sonic Youth.
Unlike future Radiohead works, the majority of the album was written using only guitars and drums; however the usage of these guitars varies throughout the album. Thinking About You sees Yorke sing an emotional lament over simple acoustic guitar while How You Do is an upbeat pop rock anthem which ends in a mesh of jerky piano and guitar screeches. The album bustles between beautiful, harmonizing guitar melodies and areas of chaotic euphony, never quite settling on a single style and this is perhaps most evident in standout track Creep.
It seems that Creep covers everything Yorke is trying to portray in the rest of the album. The song starts with a soft guitar refrain and quiet bass over which Yorke mocks himself and others like him with self loathing lyrics ‘I want a perfect body/ I want a perfect soul’. The song then explodes into a full-blown indie anthem with Jon Greenwood’s resonating guitar crunches and Yorke’s refrain ‘I’m a creep/I’m a weirdo’. The song reflects Yorke’s self-lacerating rage about not fitting in as a young man, presumably while at Exeter University, and has become an anthem and a rallying call to the disaffected youth of today.
Pablo Honey then, appears to be something of a mixed bag. While tracks like Stop Whispering and Prove Yourself are perfectly listenable and enjoyable, it is only really Creep which has any resonance after listening to the album. The album also has pitfalls in the form of the clichéd Anyone Can Play Guitar and tracks like Ripcord and Vegetable which would be at home on any below-par Britpop album. However the album ascends the bracket of standard Britpop due to the combination of mellifluous harmonies and melodies of bass and guitar and Thom Yorke’s soaring voice.
Therefore while the album may not live up to the tag some critics have given it as the British Nevermind, Pablo Honey is nonetheless a solid rock album. All the songs are well written and it is clear that all five members are talented musicians and, in Thom Yorke there is a very intelligent songwriter. Radiohead clearly have potential and in the album closer Blow Out we see the five-piece in all their glory – Yorke’s haunting voice floating above light guitar before morphing into a staggering mesh of bass, drums and Greenwood’s shrieking guitar – greater things to come, surely.
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