Revering Radiohead

The fearlessly creative band proves worthy of worship in Barrie

Radiohead
Molson Park
Toronto
August 3, 2001

It's a chore being Radiohead, I know. I've seen the movie.

If Thom Yorke and the lads would prefer not to be revered as one of the finest and most fearlessly creative bands on the planet today, though, perhaps they should stop reminding us on a semi-regular basis that they are one of the finest and most fearlessly creative bands on the planet today.

They certainly play like they wanna be adored. From both a musical and a rather specious "anti-performance" performance perspective, Radiohead is almost unparalleled amongst contemporary touring acts - and, impossibly, still seems to be improving as its stature, its audience and the venues it can fill grow larger.

Holding court before a rapt, sold-out throng of 25,000 at Molson Park in Barrie Friday night, the Oxford quintet sustained levels of artistry and sheer, heart-stopping intensity rarely witnessed at large, open-air concerts. The versatile, two-hour-plus set managed to be a big, crowd-pleasing rock show without resorting to the clichés and lowest-common-denominator predictability that usually afflict big, crowd-pleasing rock shows.

Last year's nonchalantly note-perfect stop at the Air Canada Centre proved Radiohead could triumphantly reinvent the claustrophobic electro-murk of its "difficult" Kid A album for an arena stage, so it rested upon Friday's performance to demonstrate the full potential of the divisive new Amnesiac disc before an audience slightly less unified in its present-day allegiance to the band's recorded output.

Opening with the snarling Kid A juggernaut "The National Anthem" and "Morning Bell," Radiohead let the mystery hang in the air through the cascading Jonny Greenwood/Ed O'Brien guitar fireworks of "Airbag;" a well-timed sunset rendition of "My Iron Lung," wherein the might of the evening's light show - artful hues, strobing overload and expannsive starscapes to suit each passing mood - was first displayed; and the familiar, beautifully beleaguered "Karma Police." But if the Amnesiac material occasionally sounds tentative and half-finished on record, it's suffering from no such problems on the road.

Quite the opposite, actually: A concentrated mid-set onslaught of tweaked and toned new material proved, arguably, the most consistently riveting portion of the entire program. The gently swaying "Pyramid Song" was a concert favourite before Amnesiac's release, while it was a safe bet the lush, swooning guitars of "Knives Out" and the surly "National Anthem" cousin "I Might Be Wrong" would translate well to the stage. Nothing, however, foretold the taut, buzzingly minimal reinvention of "Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box" - which shed the original's jittery electronics and defeatist tone for churlish noise and PiL-ish defiance - or a show-stopping "Dollars And Cents," whose blinding climax and wired Yorke vocal left you gasping for air and mental purchase on just what the hell was going to happen next.

The Amnesiac-fed momentum was carried through O.K. Computer's schizophrenic epic "Paranoid Android" (whose explosive third act gave Greenwood's subtle guitar heroics room to roam); an appearance by Kid A's spastic-dancing Robo-Thom on the techno-spiked "Idioteque;" and a lengthy encore that drifted hauntingly on "You And Whose Army" and "How To Disappear Completely" before firing up the guitars again for an unrecorded new track that sat remarkably well alongside the raucous "The Bends." The latter should probably have been the final number, as Radiohead's post-curfew return to the stage for the placid "The Tourist" couldn't hope to match what had come before.

Small quibble, mind you. This is a band fully in command of its abilities and its audience, and the accolades, no matter how overwrought they sometimes get, are well deserved. Blessed with a massive critical and popular following and capable of making stridently uncompromising records that still sell in the millions, Radiohead - a thinking-man's stoner band that sidesteps ugly prog-rock connotations - can have its peculiar variety of rock stardom both ways. One has but to observe the diverse crowd of trendies, Edgefest refugees, Brit-pop kids and sound-worshipping electronic-music 'heads who all consider themselves fans to deduce the group's broad appeal.

Behind the irritating, woe-is-me persecution complex, too, the attention to staging (static surveillance-camera footage on the video screens, immaculate sound and the aforementioned lighting rig) and Yorke's captivating shy-boy/weirdo presence expose Radiohead as consummate showmen. Note, for instance, how the supposedly stage-wary Yorke played to his keyboard-mounted camera during "You And Whose Army," staring directly out at the audience from the monitors while he delivered an eerie update of the Angel Heart-esque 1930s crooner numbers that had, not coincidentally, been playing before the band took the stage.

Radiohead knows exactly what it's doing. And so far, the guys have made precious few wrong moves.

-Ben Rayner

Toronto Star
05.08.01