Radiohead as always a challenging, thrilling work in progress
Radiohead/ Black Keys
Auditorium Theatre
Chicago
June 20, 2006
Things have been ominously
quiet in the Radiohead camp for a couple of years, accompanied
by reports of near-breakups and false starts on a
slow-developing new album.
But the U.K. quintet looked
and sounded rejuvenated Monday in the first of two sold-out
concerts at the Auditorium Theatre. And it came bearing gifts:
Nine new songs that bristled with fresh ideas.
It was a
treat to see a band of this stature (six acclaimed
million-plus-selling albums in 14 years) in such a relatively
small and acoustically pristine space. During the course of
the nearly two-hour, 23-song set, the band dipped into its
formidable back catalog with vigor and authority. "There
There" rode a triple-stacked drum barrage until Jonny
Greenwood's guitar tolled like a funeral bell; Greenwood
hunched over his armada of keyboards to conjure sonic
poltergeists and send them screaming across the horizon of
"The National Anthem"; and "Bones" was excavated by Colin
Greenwood's plaster-busting fuzz bass.
But the real
reason to see this show wasn't to revisit past triumphs, but
to glimpse the works in progress. With the band's last studio
release, Hail to the Thief, now 3 years old, Radiohead is
using the current tour to road-test a batch of songs for a
forthcoming album, tentatively set for release in 2007. It
seems each Radiohead album arrives with growing pains. Every
few years, the band endures an internal reckoning, and the
turmoil bleeds into anxious, deeply unsettling, frightfully
beautiful music. A band bent on not repeating itself is
setting itself up for frustration and conflict. So far, the
battles have been worth it; each new release has held
surprises and songs with staying power.
Will the new
material hold up just as well? It's too early to tell,
certainly, because Radiohead songs inevitably go through
several transformations before they're recorded. But there
were several promising new additions showcased at the
Auditorium.
If there was a thread connecting the new
songs it was this: a leaner, almost cutthroat sense of economy
and rhythmic drive, and renewed reliance on guitars instead of
the keyboard textures that have dominated the arrangements
since the 2000 landmark, Kid A.
"15 Steps" boasted a
hip-hop feel, with hand-claps and electro-rhythms pounding out
a syncopated beat while Thom Yorke's normally elongated vocals
ventured into clipped, rap-like phrasing. A frantic soul
groove gripped "Bangers 'n' Mash," with Yorke on tambourine
and a cocktail drum kit augmenting Phil Selway's stampeding
backbeat (this sentence as published has been corrected in
this text). "Open Pick" was a straight-up rock song, three
guitars revving over Selway's foundation, a nod to the
Radiohead of 1995, circa The Bends. A terse but bracing
instrumental, "Spooks," took the treble-soaked surf guitar of
Dick Dale and tripled the intensity; this was the sound of a
tsunami turning the beach into a wasteland. Best of all was
"Down is the New Up," another surging, stacked double-drum
groove with Ed O'Brien sending shivers down spines by bending
a single guitar string until it moaned.
The new ballads
found Yorke once again pulling lovely melodies out of turmoil.
In "Videotape," the singer arrives at the gates of heaven,
only to have Mephistopheles grasping at his ankles. "Nude,"
which has been floating around on Radiohead set lists since
the '90s but has never surfaced on an album, now appears ready
for its close-up: a tinge of reggae in the rhythm section,
with Yorke in falsetto cry, even as Jonny Greenwood's guitar
chords turned violent. The hymn-like "4 Minute Warning"
prompted the band to huddle around Yorke's upright piano as if
in a bomb shelter, an appropriate scenario as the song
references Britain's nuclear defense strategy during the Cold
War.
But the most surprising mood swing was
accomplished by the penultimate song, "House of
Cards."
It arrived with little fanfare, just steady
handclaps and a delicate vocal, as if a weight had been lifted
from the band's sloped shoulders.
The wan melody
floated like a leaf in a breeze, then settled on Jonny
Greenwood's guitar, and with a single sustained chord he gave
it a majestic sendoff.
It's anyone's guess if any of
these songs will end up on Radiohead's next album.
But
this foreshadowing of what might be surely left the band's
fans hoping for the
best.
Chicago Tribune
21.06.06