They changed the world with their inscrutable, post-modern style of electro-rock, but, asks Kevin Courtney, what do Radiohead do now to keep from being just another boring old avant garde group?

Radiohead/ Four Tet
Olympia Theatre
Dublin
May 17, 2003

Well, having crossed the rock 'n' roll Rubicon with the Kid A album, the Oxford quintet are certainly not turning back; their latest album, Hail To The Thief, is another collection of weirded-out tone poems, and although there are echoes of their former guitars-and-tunes incarnation in songs such as "There There", "2+2=5" and "A Punchup at a Wedding", the prevailing atmosphere is comfortingly numb and alienated. Radiohead will never be a straightforward rock band again, but it's clear that they're settling nicely into their strangeness.

The band played two shows at the Olympia over the weekend, warm-ups for their Point Theatre concert on December 3rd. These were fans-only gigs, tickets available only through the band's website and fan club. This weekend, they delivered the added bonus of a fantastic live performance. Looking fitter and happier than ever, Radiohead opened with their new single, "There There", a typically-unhinged epic in the tradition of "Paranoid Android".

You can debate the merits or otherwise of Kid A and Amnesiac till you're blue in the head, but there's no debating the onstage power of "I Might Be Wrong", "You And Whose Army?", "The National Anthem" and "Everything In Its Right Place". The crowd greets every oblique opus with the same unbridled joy that Oasis fans reserve for "Wonderwall", and they even sing along to Thom Yorke's atonal free-association, conferring classic hit status on Yorke's disjointed, dissociated lyrics. Weird.

Another side-effect of Kid A is that Radiohead are now probably the most interesting live band around, guaranteed to do something completely different with each song. So we get the odd rhythmic timelag of "Backdrifts", the vibes-and-piano fugue of "Sit Down. Stand Up", the Floydian slipstream of "Sail To The Moon", and the eerie, uncomfortable glare of "The Gloaming". We also get the statically-charged rock of "Airbag", "Just" and "Paranoid Android", and the elegiac desolation of "Lucky", "Pyramid Song" and "How To Disappear Completely". It doesn't all quite make perfect sense yet, but at least Radiohead don't seem so wilfully obtuse anymore.

Kevin Courtney

The Irish Times
19.05.03