Radiohead perfects art of contradiction

Radiohead/ Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks
Alpine Valley Music Theatre
East Troy
August 23, 2003

Radiohead nearly packed Alpine Valley sardine-can tight Saturday night, as the UK quintet has done in venues worldwide for over half a decade. There might be irony in the fact that the band has achieved enormous success with music and lyrics that vividly portray the internal disintegration of human beings: of minds, psyches and souls.

Even if the irony isn't there, the question still comes begging: Do Radiohead's songs artfully reflect some general larger insecurity, or do they present a freak show for the gawking pleasure of the better-adjusted?

The evidence for either side of the argument lay in Radiohead's performance, as personified by frontman Thom Yorke, long known as a classic case study in dealing poorly with fame. Saturday night, Yorke proved that if his angst hasn't disappeared - in fact, it drenches the band's frequently brilliant recent album, Hail to the Thief - it has carved new channels of expression.

Mugging like John Lennon circa '64 for his piano-side camera (twisted smiles and eyebrow-lifts thus transmitted to big screens on either side of the stage) when he wasn't shimmying to the band's juggernaut groove, Yorke tapped into a more external energy while remaining the complete elfin melancholic.

The rest of Radiohead has rarely been static, yet Yorke's relative liveliness appeared to galvanize them further. They stoked the sociopathic heat of "2+2=5" with a three-guitar blistering, emphasized the fragility of the music-box elegy "No Surprises" without letting it break apart and filed the vague rhythm of "I Might Be Wrong" into something serrated.

Throughout the set, Radiohead's members functioned as one organism, flowing from subwoofer beats and electronica blips to halting ballads and arena-rock frenzy with the best loud/soft dynamics a band has deployed since Nirvana piggybacked the sound of the Pixies to multiplatinum.

As ever, the melodies were gorgeous and elastic and Yorke sang like a tormented man finding relief (and beauty) in the distortions of words. Radiohead provided no answers to that earlier question, but it did leave gawkers and loners in one large, satisfied mass.

Another rock intellectual, Stephen Malkmus, opened the evening with the Jicks, his post-Pavement experiment in art-rock for the indie crowd. The Jicks played 45 minutes of intricately breezy, even cheerful songs in the sunshine; of course, it was dark by the time Radiohead took over. One of those too-neat little coincidences of life.

Jon M. Gilbertson

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
25.08.03