Flinging aside a penchant for disconnection, Radiohead feeds off raw power of new songs

Radiohead/ Deerhoof
Greek Theater
Berkeley
June 26, 2006

In the three years since the release of their testy masterpiece, Hail to the Thief, rumors have surfaced from the Radiohead camp about fractured relationships, writers' block and a new album that just can't get off the ground.

The announcement of front man Thom Yorke's upcoming solo release, The Eraser, due out next month, only fanned the fires of a possible breakup. It also didn't help that the artful British rockers are no longer signed to a record label. But the first of Radiohead's two sold-out shows at Berkeley's Greek Theatre on Friday night should have put an end to all the speculation.

For a band that is known for its restless reinvention - each album willfully disconnected from the one before it - the set seemed oddly coherent, focusing on the more driving numbers from Radiohead's catalog.

From Kid A, "Idioteque," which never lives up to its recorded version, became a tribal orgy with the guitarist Jonny Greenwood sawing at his guitars until blood was nearly drawn, dizzy from anxious stroboscopic lights and drummer Phil Selway's jittery beats. But the attention wasn't only on this band's tried-and-true hits.

In perhaps what was the biggest focus group in recent memory, the band unleashed eight new songs in all their raw power, with an emphasis on raw. But that's not a bad thing.

It's been more than a decade since this onetime guitar band actually made a swaggering rock album, full of danger, ragged rhythms and coherent choruses. Instead of turning their well-documented anger inward, creating self-conscious, misanthropic, introverted cautionary tales as in past albums, the men of Radiohead unleashed their ire with big guitars and even bigger drumming.

During one new song, "Bangers and Mash," Yorke even manned his own drum kit with a mischievous funkiness that at times recalled Beck before he went through his Sea Change.

Judging by the reception for the new songs, and the number of fans actually singing the words, it was clear that technology has caught up to this technologically forward band.

The songs and videos of the band's tour, which began in Denmark in March, have leaked onto the Internet for the past few months, and some of those earlier versions have already transmuted from their first hearings. "House of Cards," played solo acoustic by Yorke at London's Global Week of Action, has already become another beast altogether.

That is partly what this nomadic journey is for, not only to establish an audience but to use that feedback to work out some of the kinks. And you could tell from the singer's pacing and terse facial expressions during "Down in the New Up" that the song is due to go through some structural overhaul. But in its proto stage, it's a darker U2 song that could have skittered off "Pop," when the Irish superstars fancied themselves disco warriors.

Radiohead's embrace of this glossier hybrid of rock and dance music isn't so much a wanton celebration as it is a plea for a release from isolation an echo of some the themes of OK Computer.

"Down" finds Yorke beatboxing and spitting out words with a belligerent elbow on a jutting hip and the fury of a young Mick Jagger, a technique we haven't seen from him since the dawn of Britpop. And he wears it well, along with his shapeless khaki shirt, loose jeans and white trainers, not to mention his spastic dancing.

The diminutive front man has always seemed like a reluctant star, but along with the rest of the band - guitarists Greenwood and Ed O'Brien, bassist Colin Greenwood and drummer Selway - they all seem ready to don the thorny crown of rock gods.

As they worked their way through their first six albums, landing most often on Kid A and Amnesiac, it was apparent that they have abandoned much of their close introspection and decided to use their music as an aggressive agent for change.

Jaan Uhelszki

San Francisco Chronicle
26.06.06