Caitlin Moran sees Thom Yorke's Radiohead take Meltdown - and rock music - in a wonderful new direction

Radiohead
Royal Festival Hall
London
July 1, 2000

It sold out in 45 minutes. The touts are quoting £250 for a ticket, but "You might have to wait a bit, love." The band receive a standing ovation before they play a note. And the lead guitarist appears to be wearing the same T-shirt and trousers he wore for their last UK gig at Wembley, 18 months ago.

On Saturday, Radiohead returned from self-imposed exile to the Festival Hall, to play much of their forthcoming album as part of the Meltdown Festival on the South Bank. Coming from one of the four or so bands in Britain who believe that books, free jazz and rehearsing for a year-and-a-half might be better preparation for recording an album than half-a-dozen new gold signet rings, "treating" your wife to larger breasts and over-earnestly explaining how you don't take cocaine any more, new Radiohead material is very important, mainly because it gives the rest of the British music industry something to crib.

Possibly with this in mind, Radiohead have pushed their rock trolley out into deep space and come back with something so complex it makes the hieroglyphics on the pyramids look like graffiti on a bus-stop.

The band all look very excited - bassist Colin Greenwood jumps up and down when a roadie brings his double-bass on stage, and Thom Yorke smiles, something as rare as hen's tooth jam - and they forgo greeting their audience in favour of getting their new stuff out there as quickly as possible. Starting with a song the mumblesome Yorke appears to be calling Fire Escape, the band set out the menu for the rest of the evening's rock-dining: a furiously complex, borderline drum and bass rhythm section; warm, Bitches Brew electric piano, and three guitars doing stuff with time and light and sound that is probably being monitored by Jodrell Bank. Frankly, if you thought OK Computer - voted the Best Album Of All Time by Q magazine readers in 1998 - was prog-rock, wait until you get a load of this spliffy, epic, John McLaughlin/Young Gods/Talk Talk/Alice Coltrane stuff. Pretentious, them? Yes, thank God.

Encouraged by the audience's screams - audiences don't usually scream at new stuff, they fold their arms and wait for the stuff they know - the normally tetchy Yorke seems more relaxed than usual, even attempting some Stepsian arm-movements for Karma Police. The only moment of tension comes when his piano packs up during Everything is in its Right Place, a cradle of vocal samples played off each other and every reflective surface in the room. Yorke drop-kicks the instrument repeatedly, then leaps over it and starts scatting vocals as the audience clap until their palms bleed.

The invention displayed here, along with two unnamed tracks and the magnificent "Egyptian Song" - imagine Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Jeff Buckley on a commission from God to create his official Welcome to Heaven music - vaporise doubts that Radiohead were going to come up with a Standing on the Shoulders of Giants. While most of their peers seem content with punting their pop pedalo around their local lido, Radiohead have constructed a crazy intergalactic rock coracle out of the Difficult Jazz Things section at HMV, and they're rowing it to Mars.

-Caitlin Moran

The Times
04.07.00