Radiohead/ Beta Band/ DJ Koala
Suffolk Downs
Boston
August 14, 2001

The defining moment of last night's Radiohead show came during one of their new songs, "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box." The rhythms pulsed with a mix of guitars and electronics, while singer Thom Yorke fixed the sold-out crowd with a flat stare and intoned the chorus: "I'm a reasonable man, get off my case." The sentiment was unmistakably cold and nasty - but it was also a great rock song with a killer chorus hook.

There were plenty of similar thrills during last night's show; but things never got too familiar or too comfortable. The band is coming off a pair of unusually challenging albums, Kid A and Amnesiac. Recorded at the same time but released a year apart, the discs are Radiohead's pre-emptive strike against rock stardom: There are almost no guitars and no conventional songs, with a generally bitter, alienated feel. Most of last night's show was drawn from those albums, and only slightly rearranged. Guitars were back in the mix, but guitarists Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien spent nearly as much time playing keyboards or sitting out altogether.

That left Yorke as the undisputed star of the band, and his expressive voice carried most of the weight. His trademark sound is hurt and world-weary, but ballads like "No Surprises" proved he could generate warmth as well. Only one song ("My Iron Lung") came from Radiohead's first two albums, but louder tunes like "Airbag" and "Paranoid Android" brought out their earlier wall-of-guitar sound.

However, the most dramatic moments came when they ditched guitars altogether.

 "Idiotique" was five minutes of pure tension, with Yorke delivering a manic vocal against a pulsing synthesizer loop. You kept waiting for the full band to crash in; instead the song built to a fast peak and stopped dead.

"Everything In Its Right Place," which closed the main set, dissolved into echoes as the band left the stage.

Yorke confined his stage patter to a few quick thank-yous, but did offer one backhanded dedication to the Hard Rock Cafe. "We played there in Mexico, and only the rich scum could get in," he noted. "I saw one of Kurt Cobain's cardigans at the Hard Rock Cafe, about six months after he died. It was the sickest thing I've ever seen in my life." You've got to admire a band that's willing to bite the hand that feeds.

-Brett Milano

Boston Herald
15.08.01