Radiohead
Corn Exchange
Edinburgh
May 21, 2003

His arms are outstretched by his side, Christ-like. Lights explode behind him as Johnny Greenwood releases wave after wave of distorted, star-shaped noise from his Telecaster. Thom Yorke, to many here, is the new Lennon. Radiohead, to some, are better than The Beatles. If you don’t like this band, look away now – it’s true, they are better than The Beatles.

Tonight’s gig is the second time I’ve seen Radiohead play live. The first time I was stood in a tent in Paris with 10,000 others watching them unveil their Kid A-era songs. It worked. It was beautiful. But tonight, it is not beautiful. If that first gig was an art gallery full of landscapes and lost memories, tonight’s ‘intimate’ showcase is the equivalent of a room full of photo’s depicting car crashes, broken bones and spattered blood. It’s as dark as “the jaws of hell” as Yorke sings. It is magnificent.

Opening with ‘There There’, a song that I still can’t make sense of, the band plough through a set littered with ten new songs and many old. Of the new, ‘Backdrifts’, ‘A Wolf at the Door’ and ‘2 + 2 = 5’ are as good as anything they’ve done before. ‘The Gloaming’, ‘Go to Sleep’ and ‘Where I End and You Begin’ are somewhat more challenging, and leave me feeling ill, dizzy and confused. I begin to question what good ‘art’ is, and realise that Radiohead are no longer entertainment, they are true challengers, searching for new “astral” sounds. Having said that, ‘Sail to the Moon’ is too beautiful for a music critic to describe, ‘Pyramid Song’ is as always stunning ( “there was nothing to fear, nothing to doubt”) and when ‘Like Spinning Plates’ is played, it’s as if they’ve asked me what ONE song I had to heard, and answered my response – truly moving.

Radiohead continue to push things forward, while desperately wanting to please fans. Coldplay will never do this, they will simply perfect their art until they begin repeating themselves. But Radiohead have found a way out, a way to remain at the top while keeping ahead. And for this, they are geniuses.

Phil McMinn

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23.05.03