This was always going to be a great show. The kind of show about which you feel you can generalise and say that just about everyone left the sold-out Festival Hall feeling like they'd seen something really special. Like they'd been touched by some otherworldly presence.

Experiencing Radiohead in full flight is like seeing Jeff Buckley or Ben Harper for the first time. There's a certain quality that these performers share which defies explanation - whatever it is, they've got it. It's a really spiritual connection: they're capable of producing music which is so affecting as to change your life, not just move you for the duration of their performance. When you do see them play, you cease to be an audience and become so immersed in the music that nothing separates you from it: you're a part of it.

Radiohead are impressive when they rock out - a hair-raising version of 'Paranoid Android' comes surprisingly early - but they're even more so when they're quiet and intense, as in 'Exit Music (For A Film)'. This is bleak, but extraordinarily beautiful music, not unlike Joy Division in its juxtaposition of the two aspects. It's a place where you can revel in sadness and disappointment and paranoia. And just when you've decided that life is an utterly hopeless thing, you're lifted to a higher plane by one of Radiohead's soaring melodies.

The focal point is definitely Thom Yorke - he's got genuine star power. He sings like an angel and a punk. He's an utterly arresting presence, whether he's standing still or in the contorted spasms of a mechanical stick insect or conducting a hammed-up 'Creep'. He might be the centre of attention, but the rest of the band are crucial. Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien complete a three-pronged guitar attack which is overwhelming in 'The Bends'. Bassist Colin Greenwood prowls the back of the stage, but dominates 'Airbag'. Drummer Phil Selway has an impeccable touch; he knows exactly where to fill and where to leave space.

This is art-rock of the very best kind: unpredictable, complex and layered, explosive, orchestral, dynamic, surreal and laden with effects. For a band which has frequently been compared to U2, Radiohead are as much like Nirvana. They take the loud/soft formula, add the electronics and arrive at a futuristic location which subsumes the two into their own roots and amplifies the whole. Which gives us a band who are as comfortable with feedback as they are with a crystalline guitar sound; a band as alien as they are human.

-Eileen Dick

Time Off
08.02.98