in an unfinished state/played in reverse as a hidden track on Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?. "Pike St./Park Slope" is a sombre piano ballad which was compared to the works of Ben Folds and John Lennon's "Imagine". "Underground" is a "radically rearranged" cover of a song by the Seattle band This Busy Monster. Nelson's vocal performances were compared to Chuck Berry, Robert Smith and Richard Hell. The musical direction of King James Version changed several times throughout its conception, with the album initially planned on being a "dour, mellow anti-pop" record. However, after hearing about the success the English rock band Radiohead had found with their 1997 album OK Computer, which Nelson described as the "ultimate one-hit wonder redemption narrative", the band scrapped this idea and felt as though they had to make a "great leap forward, artistically, and do something really ambitious" if they were to maintain their credibility. However, as Harvey Danger were just a "garage band" and not able to figure out how to reach Radiohead's creative and technical heights, the band began to strip back their arrangements. Regardless, Nelson still credited OK Computer as an influence on the album's overall atmosphere. "It certainly was no OK Computer, though there are a couple of moments where we obviously are reaching for that kind of faux-epic sound. I’ve listened to King James Version a lot and I don’t know what the hell it sounds like." Speaking with Yahoo! Launch, Nelson labelled the album a middle ground between "catchy rock" and "very quiet, pretty songs". Lyrics The lyrics on King James Version, written solely by Nelson, are heavily philosophical and ambiguous, and primarily discuss "the conflict between faith and skepticism". The album's lyrics are often humorous, cynical, sarcastic or deadpan in nature and feature numerous references to historical popular culture, literature and places, and frequently name-drop various popular figures and musicians, such as Jesus, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanael West, the Malboro Man and Morrissey. Nelson also incorporated the use of multiple literary devices into the album's songs, especially with the use of first person, multiple and unreliable narrators, as well as using the album's lyrics as dialogues. Nelson described the album as being "very personal, but not autobiographical", and "more in the way of character study than autobiographical revelation." The album's opening track, "Meetings with Remarkable Men (Show Me the Hero)", is about a guy "looking for somebody