Caught up with them yesterday at the Civic Hall, Wolverhampton. Outstanding evening. A list of 50 songs for the tour, about 25 of which are played on any one night. The new numbers evidently surprise, stretch, please and move the audience.
The Telegraph reviewed the first of their UK tour stops, Blackpool, here, the Times here and the Guardian here. From the Times:
Enthused by the prospect of unseating our expectations, it was with relish that they delivered the UK premiere of Bangers And Mash — a collision of dystopian Motown beats and Colin Greenwood’s sinuous Roxy Music-style bassline, which saw frontman Thom Yorke singing from behind a small drumkit.
Radiohead have long been mining pop gold from places other bands wouldn’t think of looking and a brace of other new tunes suggested that they’re not about to stop now. Nude was a scratchy, esoteric nocturne that saw Yorke turn in a superb, soulful semi-falsetto. For a minute the hitherto unheard 15 Steps sounded like a mess of sluggish beats and clapping, until Jonny Greenwood chipped in with the sort of mellifluous guitar melody one might more commonly find on old Nigerian pop records.
And from the Telegraph:
Over their two decades, they've amassed such an arsenal of awesome songs that they can alter their setlist radically each night. Indeed, Radiohead's greatness can be judged by the songs they don't play, as much as by the songs they do. No Surprises, Fake Plastic Trees, Karma Police, Street Spirit, Just - these are some of the past 20 years' most extraordinary tracks. All are left out.
Disappointing? No - because they still offer a sublime Paranoid Android, a majestic Planet Telex, a towering There There, a crushing My Iron Lung. They've simply written more good songs than they've got time to fit in - and this is a two-hour show. There are few, if any, bands today about whom the same could be said. It's doubtful that, say, Red Hot Chili Peppers could satisfy a stadium if they discarded Under the Bridge, Give It Away and By the Way.
Six songs are new. A return to the driving emotional rock of The Bends? Or a Kid A-style plunge into the unknown? Both, but more of the former. For example, Bangers 'N' Mash, which is fast and tetchy, with frontman Thom Yorke hammering at a drum kit while singing. (Yorke has always liked prog-rock, but few can have foreseen the day he'd turn into Phil Collins.) Then there's Bodysnatchers, which suggests a livelier Joy Division, with Yorke twisting and jerking in the demented puppet-on-strings manner of that band's singer Ian Curtis. Nude is the kind of ballad Radiohead practically patented, building - like Exit Music and How to Disappear Completely - from a subdued start to a climactic wail. Arpeggi is pacier, with a shrill guitar line of the sort U2 pioneered on their Joshua Tree album. By contrast, 15 Step is computerised experimentation, and at the end sounds a bit like the similarly avant-garde Idioteque from Kid A being sucked down a plughole. House of Cards is odder still - if only because it's so uncharacteristically pleasant and light.
All very promising.
It's about time I thought of improving my camera (and my technique), but such as they are my photos from the evening are on Flickr. Concerning Thom Yorke's album, The Eraser, see this Guardian piece.
