With new record, Hail To The Thief out in the shops on June 9th James Berry asks the question: are Radiohead still wilfully obstinate or just wilfully crap?

Radiohead
Shepherd’s Bush Empire
London
May 24, 2003

Sometime over the past year or two, in the interim between Amnesiac and the fully-realised now, little known connoisseur of the mashed-up lo-fi ditty 0898 Dave made a tune called ‘Cheer Up’ available to the world for consumption. It ran: “Cheer up Thomy Y, cheer up Thomy Y, it might never ‘appen, might never ‘appen, cheer up Thomy Y”. It was sharp, concise and rather sweet. Though alas, widespread acclaim never beckoned, it got a few plays on XFM and remained a wry, unknown piece of kitch observational art. But fuck me, Dave. You may well have actually done the trick. If you’ve got the time we’ve got an expanse of more pressing impossibilities you can work on?

Thom Yorke (aka Thomy Y) stands at the lip of the stage during ‘Idiotheque’, as he does many times tonight during many other songs, with a wayward smile plastered obtusely across his boney face like a hurried Picasso. His pupils dart like hidden eyes behind a painting, scouring the four packed tiers of the theatre, fanned by the frantic beats, as if he’s attempting individual eye contact with one and all. His arms are extended above his head. His features are bright and attentive. He is happy. More than that. He is physically content, emotionally confident and actually participating. For possibly the first time in who knows how long, maybe ever, he seems a participant in his own play (and an overzealous one at that), rather than being prodded from the wings, shackled in the ill-fitting boots of a caricature.

Kid A, Amnesiac and their respective live shows may, in eyes aplenty, have signalled the deepest and most uncharted of dives into indulgence since Kevin Rowland dressed up a bit at Reading and left the handbag with the decent tunes in his dressing room. But what their detractors failed to credit, or even notice, is that their live heart beat stronger than ever before during that period, as skewiff a time signature as it may have had. It’s like they’d taken themselves off the treadmill that the ground beneath their feet had become. They became comfortable, balanced, unconstrained. You could even go so far as to say they came of age, and without conceding to the creative downgrading that could have entailed.

Ardent OK Computer, Bends and ‘Creep’ fans might have played the fragile conservative folkies to Radiohead’s Dylan at the Albert Hall, but if they’d attended 2000’s tented gigs or 2001’s homecoming spectacle in Oxford, they’d have seen a band heaping meat onto their bones when the commonplace conception was that they were hacking it off with sterilised blades. The likes of ‘Morning Bell’ and ‘National Anthem’ tonight still have a live pulse that sends the head spinning, one that’s not faded with time or perspective or been crushed in the stampede back to the guitars of ‘There There’. ‘Morning Bell’ in particular sounds like a band building and resetting their boundaries with a discarded elegance and should number amongst one of the very best from their career span.

Some tracks do stand awkwardly back to back, some are incompatible, some new ones (‘Scatterbrain’ and ‘Backdrifts’ for instance) don’t lend themselves to the unfamiliarity that a live unveiling presents. Not that it is an unveiling for many here tonight, already driven by impatience and online literacy. But what practically every song does present is a snap of a band, or machine - as that is effectively what such efficiency, composure and power normally manifests itself as - towering over or circling every peak thhey find themselves on or around. Ed O’Brien has been recently dropping the word “swagger” in interviews to describe their continuing live confidence. If it lacks the actual poise of a ‘swagger’ then it is certainly no less than a big beautiful ‘lurch’.

The new stuff, then. The reason for their continued and mutating satisfaction and existence. The accelerant that has transformed Thomy Y from reclusive Dungeon Master to the Hunchback of Notre Dame with a flamboyant drunk overconfidence and Tim Booth’s shoes. The point of these ridiculously small shows. It’s naturally hard to interpret the songs at face value when they, on first impressions, carry over the slow-burning, long-term-investment that they found so comforting those last two records. The dividing line between albums again sounds vague, but this time the jugular never seems out of reach.

‘Sail To The Moon’ is a ‘Pyramid Song’ done concert hall Jeff Buckley style, ‘The Gloaming’ is as sinister, soiled and looming as the title hints, and an amazing ‘There There’ also takes on a slight Bad Seeds flavour uniquely in the flesh, acting as a raft for much-stronger-than-the-single vocals from Thom. Then there is ‘2+2=5’. It follows ‘There There’ with dizzying off-beats and warped ambience before booting off its own head with their most infuriating, jagged and passionate bombast since ‘Electioneering’, double time, harder, faster, stronger. It feels like it can’t really be followed. But they manage.

They’ve grown to be wilfully obstinate, it could certainly be interpreted that way anyway - take Thom waging of a defensive war against every stereotype ever cast at him, to the point where he’ll now swear ash-grey is Persil-white as further blackened embers fall around him. Or at least gibber random eccentricities from time to time. It’s far from a callous obstinance though, that can be seen on every face onstage. They’ve found enjoyment in it and, without compromising that indulgence, they truly believe you could too. This is their art, in spite of it, like all art, borrowing from other people’s art, and in a less puritanical way. Tonight though maybe this discussion is rendered irrelevant. After all, one man’s obstinance is a partisan Radiohead crowd’s g-spot.

Crud
05.06.03