Pablo Honey - Recent

Recent

Although the release of Pablo Honey was not met with the critical fervour of later Radiohead albums, it has received praise in retrospective press coverage. Lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood has expressed the opinion that the album has been somewhat underrated since release. NME placed the album 35th of the 50 albums to appear in the magazine's end-of-year list for 1993, describing it as "a throwback to a homegrown tradition of great guitar-band albums. In 1998, Q magazine readers voted Pablo Honey the 61st greatest album of all time. A Virgin poll saw Pablo Honey voted 100th in the all-time top 1000 albums. In 2004, Q included "Lurgee" and "Blow Out" a list of twenty essential, lesser-known Radiohead songs as part of their "1010 Songs You Must Own". In 2006, Classic Rock recognised the importance of Pablo Honey's contribution to popular music in the 1990s by including the album in their "200 Greatest Albums of the 90's" (also featured in sister publication, Metal Hammer) as one of the 20 greatest albums of 1993. In a 2008 review, the BBC described the album as Radiohead's "exploration of suburban, adolescent self-awareness", concluding, "It all resulted in a stunning blend that combined the best aspects of prog rock (challenging lyrics, deft chord changes, novelty time signatures and so forth) with the plaintiveness of bedsit singer song-writing and the sound of expensive equipment thrashed at by experts. Though later albums were better received, this remains one of rock's most impressive debuts." The same year, Blender placed the album 82nd in a feature entitled "100 Albums You Must Own", writing, "Self hate couldn't have found a better British exemplification with this band's debut single, which hit the world as part of an album that constructed walls of crunchy guitar tones amidst the dark lyrical content." British music critic, Louis Pattison, in a review for Amazon, said of the album, "Pablo Honey... is much more than filler. "Anyone Can Play Guitar" is certainly as good as "Creep"; swathed in walls of feedback, it races blindly into an apocalyptic chorus, frontman Thom Yorke singing "As the world turns and as London burns, I'll be standing on the beach with my guitar." Certainly, indie-rock seldom got better than this"; in 2009, Amazon editors ranked Pablo Honey 26th in their "The 100 Greatest Debut Albums of All Time". IGN Music, in a 2010 article, ranked the often-maligned Pablo Honey as the 5th best of Radiohead's seven studio albums, writing, "Is it a classic? Yes. But when you consider that Radiohead would become one of the most innovative bands of the decade, Pablo Honey feels somewhat conventional. That doesn't make it any less awesome, however." Over time, the band began to drop many of the songs on the album from live setlists. However, since the turn of the millennium, "You", "Creep", "Lurgee" and "Blow Out" have all received live airings.