A nastier comedy routine begins with track two, “Paranoid Android,” which the band has always maintained was a lark. When a 1997 interviewer asked Yorke if it was okay to laugh at the multi-part epic about “unborn chicken voices” and “the yuppies networking,” Yorke replied, “Absolutely, you’re supposed to.” He added that the song title was chosen as “a joke,” meant to satirize popular perception of him a creep, weirdo, and/or loser. This year, guitarist Ed O’Brien told Rolling Stone, “People thought it was prog, but prog always took itself so seriously. And ‘Paranoid Android,’ there's a kind of serious message in there, but it’s kind of cartoon-like.” The lewd animated music video confirms that point.

Of course, “Paranoid Android” is among the most revered Radiohead tracks not simply because “kicking, squealing Gucci little piggy” is a fun coinage. As with “Airbag,” the song cackles at the ridiculousness of life, but unlike with “Airbag,” its laughs are of disgust. The segmented structure bolsters the totality of the crackup: Yorke starts with a giggle at his inner conflicts, then begins ranting out of social alienation (apparently inspired by an encounter with coked-up, Gucci-wearing patrons of a Hollywood bar), and then roasts the general human condition. “The panic, the vomit, the panic, the vomit,” Yorke drones amid the band’s mournful pomp, setting up the sarcastic punchline: “God loves his children, yeah.” The guitar zap that follows is like a rimshot.

Later amid the crunched-bug imagery of “Let Down,” Yorke deadpans, “Don’t get sentimental, it always ends up drivel.” This is partly a jab at the band itself, which was so in command of emotional dynamics and so enamored with tragedy that songs like “Exit Music (For a Film)” and “Karma Police” edged toward the maudlin. But part of Radiohead’s genius is how they cut the proto-Coldplay mush with Yorke’s tart, dadaist wordplay (take the girl whose “Hitler hairdo” makes the singer feel ill) and sick irony. “Subterranean Homesick Alien” climaxes in a blissful fantasy of being locked into a mental institution; “Exit Music” has Romeo and Juliet issuing a killing curse as they kill themselves; the chorus of “Electioneering” is a concise political aphorism that scans as a dad joke.

But the instrumentation arguably does more of the comedy work. Producer Nigel Godrich and the band bedazzled guitar rock with artificially glinting baubles, and various elements in the mix seemed to jeer at or contradict others. The glockenspiel of “No Surprises” is dry satire, playing on the listener’s associations with toy boxes and nursery rhymes as Yorke calmly describes crippling anxiety. The glorious choral vocals on songs like “Exit Music” and “Lucky” sound washed out, air-quoted, as if we’re hearing not singers in a studio but rather carolers on the radio. That these outpourings of emotion feel canned doesn’t make them less effective—in fact, their visceral power supports Yorke’s commentary on the post-modern condition. To paraphrase him a few years earlier on “Fake Plastic Trees,” they look like the real thing, they taste like the real thing.