James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Young – Part 16: Pablo Honey

If only there were a way to get to the sixteenth letter of the alphabet without referencing the immortal Blockbusters joke, “I’ll have a ‘P’ please Bob”

But there isn’t, so I did.

Obviously the above reference may mean nothing to you, particularly if you didn’t watch the quiz show Blockbusters in the 80s and 90s, when it was presented by the late great Bob Holness.

But let us not dwell on that now, because it has no relevance to the rest of this post.

Except that it is now time for us all to have a ‘P’…

P is for Pablo Honey

It would be almost unthinkable to do any kind of 90s retrospective on music without including Radiohead. But I assumed I’d probably go with ‘OK Computer’, given that it is oft regarded as one of the greatest records of all time.

And ‘OK Computer’ was an album that saw me through some pretty dark times in my younger days and for a very long time it didn’t leave my CD player.

But actually the same could be said for Radiohead’s debut album, ‘Pablo Honey’. It is, admittedly, regarded by many critics as by far their weakest album and, from what I’ve read, it doesn’t appear to be beloved by the band themselves.

But whether it’s as good as the rest of Radiohead’s back catalogue is not really the point. When it came out there were no other Radiohead albums to compare it to, and frankly I was around fourteen years old at the time, so I liked it for what it was.

And what it was, was a pretty decent collection of rock songs.

It might lack the innovation of later Radiohead albums, but it was certainly more accessible. Lets be honest, even the most die-hard Radiohead fan would have to admit that some of their later stuff is hard work. ‘Kid A’ grew on me eventually, but it took a long time.

I loved Pablo Honey the first time I heard it, and I still love it now.

If anyone else had released it, it would be probably be considered a great album in its own right and it seems unfair that it suffers in the shadows of it’s more accomplished siblings.

And it does contain one of the stand-out tracks of the nineties in Creep.