Radiohead Play Unreleased Material At New York Show

Though concentrating on the new Kid A, band also throws in songs only available via Napster.

Radiohead
Roseland Ballroom
New York
October 11, 2000

NEW YORK - Attacking their samplers and keyboards with as much fervor as their guitars, Radiohead brought the icy textures of their chart-topping new album, Kid A, to raucous life Wednesday night in their first U.S. show in two years.

The British band's famously dour frontman, Thom Yorke, appeared downright gleeful at times during the sold-out Roseland Ballroom show, which came on the eve of Kid A's unexpected debut as the nation's best-selling album.

"This is for all the people who heard it on Napster," Yorke said, smiling, before playing an unreleased piano ballad tentatively titled "The Pyramid Song" as an encore.

A few minutes earlier, as the techno beats of the new "Idioteque" pulsed behind him, Yorke hurled himself around the stage, egging on the packed crowd with frantic hand gestures in the manner of Underworld vocalist Karl Hyde.

Yorke's high spirits were evident from the beginning: He grinned broadly as a seven-man horn section walked out with the band for the evening's first song, Kid A's "The National Anthem", and almost immediately plunged into his performance.

Yorke frantically stomped his right foot as he roared wordlessly over the bleating horns and fuzz bass of the intro, and without warning, his guttural moans morphed into his familiar, elastic tenor, thickened by layers of reverb.

Lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood played an airy keyboard part during "The National Anthem," as he would for much of the night. Yorke also performed without his guitar, downsizing Radiohead's trademark three-guitar attack to Ed O'Brien's rhythm work alone.

After the chiming chords of another new track, "Morning Bell," Yorke and Greenwood reclaimed their guitars for "Airbag", from the band's third album, 1997's OK Computer.

Greenwood's textural, feedback-and-effects-driven guitar work showed common ground between Radiohead's guitar-rock past and their techno-influenced present.

The band played much of Kid A, while also treating the worshipful crowd to several unreleased songs from the album's sessions, as well as favorites from OK Computer and 1995's The Bends.

With ferocious, note-perfect performances of the older songs, Radiohead made it clear that they have no intentions of abandoning the pleasures of rock anytime soon.

"This is a rock song," Yorke proclaimed, as the band burst into the guitar pyrotechnics of The Bends' title track  in the encores.

Even as Radiohead reaffirmed their roots, their audience happily embraced the band's new direction.

The crowd, which included singer/songwriter Sean Lennon and at least one of the Beastie Boys, responded enthusiastically even to such unreleased songs as the funky, keyboard-driven "Dollars and Cents."

"I thought it was great that they played songs that no one had heard before," said Nicholas Lorden, a 22-year-old fan from New York. "They feel free to do whatever they want, and they know that we'll follow them."

Radiohead are scheduled to play two more North American shows in the near future: a date Tuesday in Toronto and an Oct. 20 performance in Los Angeles.

Brian Hiatt

Sonicnet
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