Radiohead airs out fine surprises

Radiohead/ Willy Mason
Hummingbird Centre
Toronto
June 7, 2006

Maybe Radiohead is overrated, and maybe those of us privileged to be writing about bands like Radiohead for a living are guilty of overrating them.

Still, there are few other acts on today's rock touring circuit that can take command of a room so decisively while adhering to a policy of sheer, ambitious musicianship.

Radiohead is accused of pretension, but it can get away with being pretentious because no matter what "difficult" directions its collective muse might follow - 10-minute capsule rock operas, clanging avant-techno spazz-outs, free-jazz breakdowns, mirthless refrains of "We hope that you choke" - it usually subverts them into real, meaty songs that play more and more like pop as time goes by.

The Oxford quintet attracts the sort of enlightened audience that will pack auditoriums for tours in which brand-new music takes precedence over old favourites, with unlikely set-list choices constantly redefining the canon of Radiohead "hits."

Indeed, the 3,200-strong congregation for the band's hot-ticket stop at the Hummingbird Centre last night -  the first of two shows at the venue on a 19-date "warm up" tour in which they're workshopping material for a later album - gratefully took in a volley of unfamiliaar tunes that wound Radiohead's eccentric guitar rock into oblique new shapes.

The audience also actively "shushed" those elements who felt obliged to hoot, holler and occasionally clap along (tastelessly and off time, it should be noted) during such quiet, catalogue-perusing classics as The Bends' "Street Spirit," OK Computer's "Exit Music (for a Film)," Kid A's "How to Disappear Completely" and a mournful encore waltz through Amnesiac's "Pyramid Song." And when obvious set fodder was largely discarded for the complex impressions and mathematical playing of "Dollars & Cents," a raging "Myxomatosis" and a thoroughly tech-y deconstruction of Hail to the Thief's "The Gloaming," it all went down as easily as if Thom Yorke and his bandmates had suddenly busted out "Creep."

This is the first time one of Radiohead's storied preview tours has actually crossed the Atlantic, so the plethora of fresh songs scattered amongst "Morning Bell" and "There There" and a slightly scary "The National Anthem" gave the room a palpable thrill of discovery.

Some of the selections appeared to turn slightly backwards towards the more straightforward songwriting and post-shoegazer Jonny Greenwood/Ed O'Brien guitar fireworks of the band's green years. But they all marched to a heightened rhythmic intricacy that found bassist Colin Greenwood and drummer Phil Selway finding the seams in tick-tocking, tumbledown beats that seemed to reference electronic music and jazz in similar measures. The rattled "Bangers 'n' Mash" required a second drumkit behind which Yorke summoned his inner Phil Collins to sing and dole out polyrhythms.

"House of Cards," meanwhile, ushered in a newly slinky, R&B-haunted tone for the group, even prompting a sputter of laughter and a restart on the first verse from Yorke when he, too, was apparently struck by the oddity of his transformation into an elfin pseudo-soul man.

That moment, combined with a mid-song guitar breakdown on Greenwood's part, offered a rare glimpse of imperfection in a Radiohead performance. It was proof the band is human, after all, and tacitly suggested the next tour will be even more astounding.

Ben Rayner

Toronto Star
08.06.06