This is the first track in the band's repertoire to be described as "scary." It relies heavily on strings, but not in the conventional way. The string section, covered by Jonny alone, features 16 different violins playing quarter tones apart from each other.

The audience's cue that the band is about to play this song live comes when Jonny pulls out a small radio and begins tuning it to different stations. During the band's sound checks, Jonny locates classical-music or news-oriented local radio stations, and uses these -never rock stations- to execute Climbing Up the Walls. "I spent about 20 minutes tuning in some local radio stations before the show," Jonny Greenwood said. "There’s always the danger that Huey Lewis and the News are going to turn up in an inappropriate part of the song -- but that’s all part of the fun, I suppose."

A very slow, and very eerie song, Thom's vocals have been altered by computer to give off a more distorted and scary effect. The lyrics are particularly creepy, and some of Radiohead's best. The song is about the monster in your head, and about all your fears coming to reality. It's slow in tempo to begin with, but towards the end picks up some pace as a horrible howling wind sound competes with distorted guitars and voilins, not to mention Thom screeching the lyric 'Climbing up the walls'.