Exactly. It's nothing special, but at least nothing on "Pablo Honey" is as bad as something like "Pop is Dead". "Blow Out" in particular is a pretty good song.

The Gloaming is very good but you're only saying that because it's the most Krautrock-ish.

Any album that can get such a varied ranking of the songs doesn't need it's greatness to be discussed any further.

I'm probably way out of the mainstream on this, but that's kind of how all their albums feel to me, which is not a criticism, just an observation. Obviously, they have a set of sounds and moods they mostly explore, so none of their albums is frustratingly incoherent, and in all their albums I've never encountered a transition from one song to the next that is jarring (at least in a bad way), but none of their albums strike me as a complete work of art whose very structural integrity relies on the presence of each and every song on the album. OK Computer probably comes the closest to this, but it also explores a relatively smaller palette of sounds than their later work.

I don't feel that way at all, I think most of their albums flow together perfectly and HTTP's only real weakness is that it's so eclectric it hurts that flow.

I think OK Computer and Kid A are both albums where although not all the songs are on the same level, it feels like there would be something missing if you took anything out. I feel like that's one reason Radiohead gets compared to Pink Floyd so much, not just because their music is weird and trippy.

And as I said before I think Amnesiac has even better flow than those two even if it's not as good.

I Will isn't bad, it just doesn't leave any real impression on me. A Punchup at a Wedding is the only song on HTTT I flat out don't like, and one of the few Radiohead songs I don't like period.

It isn't, though. Where I End and You Begin is the song I would give that title to.

What really made me love The Gloaming was an intense listen while paying close attention to the lyrics. The combination of the imagery and the sounds is just perfect, and a great encapsulation of what Radiohead does best. That's the source of my love for it.

One of the great many not-even-close-to-being-fully-conceived critical projects of my life is a close analysis of Radiohead's oeuvre concentrating on the interaction between their lyrics and music, which I am convinced does have some sort of governing logic behind it. The problem is that each album/ep/single they release is such a step in a different direction that it forces you to rethink (and therefore deepen) all of your thoughts on everything that has come before (think how much the line about "dislodged my depression" in Supercollider forces you to reconsider their attitudinal trajectory between Pablo Honey and King of Limbs). It gives me the feeling that I can't even start in earnest until they break up. Still, I would encourage more people who love this band to really start asking themselves meaningful questions about the interaction between the lyrics and the music in order to appreciate them even more. I thought I had gotten everything there was to get out of this band, but that's only because I was only half-listening to their lyrics, which often times puts their music in an entirely new light.

Radiohead lyrics are interesting because they are one of the only bands I like that have lyrics that are just as good on paper as when sung. You can just read them as if they're poems and they are incredible and have such an inherent movement and musicality to them already. The "Airbag" lyrics always stick with me...

I think you're right.

Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box is so great. The last thing I expect after that distant, kind of creepy banging-on-pipes percussion is the catchy synths that follow.

Bumped Backdrifts into the top tier of HttT.

Also Rashed's posted this before, but this version of "I Will" is essential listening:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbvJAKmZ_40[/youtube]

I wish the official lyrics to Reckoner went
"Because we're separate like ripples on a black shore"
instead of
"Because we separate like ripples on a black shore"

Ehh, I might bump I Will up my tier, now that I know what inspired Thom to write the song it's hard not to feel something when listening to it.

In fact HTTT as a whole is a haunting listen when you think of it as a concept album about everything that was happening at that time, the war, the paranoia, all the media bullshit, the big mess our kids are going to inherit, etc.

Such a fucking misunderstood album.