10. “We Suck Young Blood”

This song seems like it was written for a mythical hunchback living in a cave and dreaming of white women. Is the high-pitched head-voice the only voice Thom Yorke remembers how to use ever now when saying actual words besides the ooh-ooh? I feel like if this song were written in the 1400s they would have strung the dude on the rack to see if he sounded like that then, too. Sometimes you open a car door and you hear this boy whining like this over the minor chord that sounds like an accident at practice turned into middle-of-the-album-so-we-can-suck-inordinately-for-now track. Definitely not sure we need more than one of homeboy’s voice layered at once ever, for real. They ought to replace the last word in this song’s title with another word.

9. “Lotus Flower”

I was first introduced to this song with the video for the song, which consequently rendered me unable to actually hear the music or ever listen to the rest of the album at all after seeing Thom Yorke doing his deformed raver robo-Brit pee-pee t-shirt spasm dance that I think caused an explosion in my face to the point I’ll never be able to wear jeans again. I don’t know who sold this guy the bowler hat but now it’s all I hear when he sings in his head-voice like an albino dwarf whose never seen the sun. I sharpen butter knives at night thinking about what I have seen here, or I just don’t listen to any music at all again.

8. “House of Cards”

If I had no legs I’d put this song on when I was feeling particularly down and self-defeated. I don’t know who said “yes please” when they heard this deformed Sittin On The Dock of the Bay-abortion riff but then they decided they could make it even more deformed by starting off with the lyric, “I don’t want to be your friend.” Well that makes two of us, bro. It gets more and more painfully obvious that a guy named Nigel is behind the boards on the majority of these songs. I can almost feel Beck sitting in the room behind him on this one text messaging with Courtney Love about meeting up to go shopping for weird clothes later. Political musicians are the funniest thing ever.

7. “Stop Whispering”

Feels unfair sort of to pick on Pablo Honey, considering people could remember it sucked even after they started creaming over any techno-with-a-croon poo these boys conjured. I can remember being sixteen and overweight as hell wearing Umbros and Michael Jordan t-shirts every day and hearing this song and kind of already laughing at it even though in my chub-angst I thought it was really powerful they told me I should start shouting at other bros. I never really did that but I still remember the day I took Pablo Honey to the used CD store to finally get $3 back so I could buy a fro-yo and the 90s pre-hip alt-bro told me they already had enough of this disc, sorry. Feel like the drummer from Deep Blue Something guested on this track.

6. “The Gloaming”

Some of my least favorite Radiohead moments are when they are feeling the most experimental. I’d rather listen to a Skrillex beat all day on loop than the mange-hump I’m-nineteen-and-weird scramble-sausage thing they’ve constructed here and let Thommy Boy go ham on all barfing in his own mouth pseudo-emotionally. Yes, I too remember when the green Line 6 loop pedal came out and everyone with long hair who’d ever touched an amp bought one. “They will suck you down to the other side / till the shadows bloom”? If you read these lyrics out loud at the Kill Your Daddy Empowerment Poetry Reading you’d be silented off the stage. I don’t know, guys, stick to the pop music.