Radiohead/ Willy Mason
Civic Hall
Wolverhampton
May
15, 2006
Rock's naked emperor rears its head, the skies blacken, the clouds crack, the Kraken awakes, the world awaits, dinosaurs roam the earth, and lo: there's new Radiohead material. Its rhythm is the heartbeat of a dying sperm whale. Its percussion is the bleep of a faulty heart monitor, slowed to 12rpm. Its music is the whirr of a fax machine, bounced off the face of Saturnand received on a satellite dish. Its vocals are the whines of a depressed tapir, played backwards.
Well, actually, not. Radiohead's last three-and-a-half albums (OK Computer is the half) may have constituted one long middle-finger salute to their long-suffering, gradually dwindling audience, but on tonight's evidence, music's most pompously self-important, serially pretentious and wilfully unlistenable megastars have decided they want to be a proper rock band again. Hurrah!
It may be a while before we hear evidence in recorded form (bizarrely, the band are currently unsigned and, although Thom Yorke will release a solo album in July, the new Radiohead release is tentatively pencilled in for 2007), but something's definitely changed. They still don't do "Creep". And there's still a modicum of whining from Thom Yorke. But, for whatever reason, he is a far more entertaining performer than we've ever seen him be. His enthusiastically bad dancing is one factor. There's also some microphone-butting and shamanistic tambourine-waving, and - gasp - some jokes.
But the music, too, is geared towards rocking the house. "I Might Be Wrong" gets some Roses/Zeppelin riffing, and one new track is built around some straightforward strumming that's closer to Jack Johnson than Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
It's often undeniably exciting and, in the case of "Where I End and You Begin", quite beautiful. Coming from someone who owns a homemade "I Hate Radiohead" T-shirt, this is no small concession. In short, Radiohead 2006 are acting and sounding more like a stadium band than ever before. A reward for our patience, or a retreat? Your call.
The
Independent
21.05.06