Showing all the enthusiasm of a kid climbing on a bike for the first time in three years, Radiohead kicked off its first major U.S. tour since 1998 last night (June 18) with a show that belied its moody, misanthropic ways.

While local concert insiders are still trying to figure out why the British band chose the balmy Woodlands Amphitheater near Houston to open its summer outing (the most popular theory is that it pleased SFX Entertainment, which has an especially large regional office nearby), fans from across the Lone Star State asked no questions. Most of the 20,000 seats were gobbled up in a day and quickly reached prices of more than $200 at area ticket brokers.

However, the ticket rush came long before the band's second album in eight months, Amnesiac, went on sale and caused more head-scratching than its predecessor, Kid A. Though the record debuted at No. 2 on The Billboard 200 last week, it left many listeners wondering if its fractured, coarse music styles - similar to the surreal artiness on Kid A - would transfer well, if at all, to the stage.

And at least up until the show's two meandering encores, the new stuff was surprisingly effective. From the start, the dramatic, Pink Floyd-like turns and psychedelic throbbing of show openers "The National Anthem" and "Morning Bell" proved well suited to the outdoor rock scene, which included a backdrop of fluorescent and glittering lights and a consistent smell of marijuana (when did the once-collegiate Radiohead become such a stoner band?).

Following those tracks with earlier gems "Lucky" and "My Iron Lung," the band established a pattern of playing two older songs for every couple of new tunes. It may have been a mechanical way of appeasing fans while breaking in new material, but it worked.

The eerie "Knives Out" and a tribal-sounding "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box" bled fluently into the wicked rocker "Bones" and the ambient "Exit Music (For a Film)," the latter two off 1995's The Bends and 1997's OK Computer, respectively. Later, a sing-a-long version of "Karma Police" made a great set-up for the hypnotically rhythmic new single "I Might Be Wrong." Best of all was the stop-start opus "Paranoid Android," which could well be the best six minutes rock fans will experience at concerts this summer, followed by "Idioteque," the most effective melding of the techno and rock elements of the recent songs.

All the while, singer Thom Yorke made a concerted effort to be a better frontman. With guitarist Jonny Greenwood bent over keyboards and digital equipment most of the night and the rest of the band keeping to the background, Yorke basked in the glow of the limelight, at times dancing and banging a tambourine at the microphone or drawing cheers whenever he sat at a piano. In all, he wowed the crowed most with his near-perfect pitch, which lasted the length of the two-hour show.

Those high points threatened to be numbed by two especially lagging encores, when the band wheeled out some of its most challenging new songs, including "How to Disappear Completely" and "You and Whose Army?" The anthemic rock of show closer "The Bends" saved the encore in the end, and the band was clearly delighted by the reception.

Before leaving the stage, Yorke gushed, "We'd like to thank you for being really sweet and lovely to us," neither sounding or acting much like the guy who has frequently bad-mouthed pop fame. That's probably a good thing, since this summer's tour could easily send Radiohead a few orbits higher into the stratosphere.
-Chris Riemenschneider

Billboard
19.06.01