Radiohead/ Willy Mason If the timing of Radiohead's first ever Toronto soft-seater shows is
peculiar - it's been three years since the Brit art-rockers' last album,
Hail to the Thief, and a new one isn't coming till '07 - it was also
fortuitous. With no new album to promote, Radiohead's setlist provides a
rare opportunity to witness the band's subjective assessment of their own
body of work - and that, in turn, gives us as much an idea of where the
band is heading as the eight new songs that were test-driven on the first
night of the band's sold-way-the-fuck-out Hummingbird Centre stand.
It's telling that the first real glimpse we get of Thom Yorke's face
appears in extreme black 'n' white close-up on one of the 10 assymetrical
video screens that hang over the stage like shards of broken glass; a
keyhole-camera perched onto his piano captures him slurring out the
opening verse of "You and Whose Army?" in uncomfortably grim detail. The
band employed the same visual trick at their triumphant 2001 Molson Park
performance, and likewise a good portion of the Hummingbird Centre set
skews toward that era's twin releases: Kid A and Amnesiac. Radiohead's
performance still very much reflects those albums' gear-head mentality:
each song seemingly requires a small army of stagehands to roll out new
instrumental set-ups, while guitarist Jonny Greenwood is practically
sequestered from the rest of the band at stage right, in a laboratory-like
arrangement of keyboards, laptops and various machines with an
intimidating array of buttons and knobs that make sounds like
"sczkrrrrnngg."
But where Kid A and Amnesiac were notoriously insular and at times
oppressive in their anti-pop provocations, here the ominous dub-punk of
"National Anthem" and tinkertoy electro of "Idioteque" are transformed
into muscular - and yes, danceable - workouts that elicit a ceaseless
stream of Beatles-on-Ed-Sullivan shrieks from the crowd (which, rather
annoyingly, didn't let up even for the solemn passages on "Exit Music" or
"How to Disappear Completely"). Beyond casting a different light on the
darkest corners of their repertoire, the show also serves to undermine Radiohead's miserablist reputation. Dressed in jeans and a blue polo
shirt, Yorke looked less the tortured artist of repute than a grad student
looking to pick up at a student disco night (complete with the unabashedly
awkward dance moves). This uncharacteristic swagger is reflected in a
handful of the new songs, like "Bangers 'n' Mash" (featuring Yorke on
auxiliary drum kit) and "Arpeggi," which recall the motorik propulsion of
Goo-vintage Sonic Youth and seem eager to crash onto post-punk party
playlists. Then again, second-encore opener "4 Minute Warning" is a
winsome last-call saloon serenade that suggests a return to heartfelt
Bends-era balladry - which would be quite welcome, if only to put the Keanes of the world in their place.
That's the nice thing about being Radiohead in 2006. They don't have to
react to the monster success of The Bends and OK Computer by making
oblique records like Kid A and Amnesiac, and they don't have to apologize
for those records by making conciliatory albums like Hail to the Thief.
They can do whatever the hell they want. When Thom Yorke first sang
"Everything In Its Right Place" on Kid A six years ago, it felt
like a sarcastic salvo to a record defined by disorientation. Tonight,
with the entire Hummingbird Centre coaxing out the song's subliminal house
pulse with 4/4-timed handclaps, it felt like truer words have never been
spoken.
Hummingbird Centre
Toronto
June 7, 2006
Stuart Berman
Eye
08.06.06