VANCOUVER - Officially out of their lengthy "studio" period and into the great outdoors on their current concert tour, Radiohead has some lost time to make up for these days.

The band played only three North American shows in support of Kid A last year. In the two years previous, they grew paranoid about finishing actual songs and recording them, for fear of having to go on tour again. Yeah, life sucks when you're one of the biggest bands on the planet.

There seemed to be a sense of payback for the faithful when the Oxford art-rockers strolled onto Thunderbird Stadium's stage Sunday and quickly tore into the distorto-bass riff of "National Anthem". For the next two hours-plus, Radiohead proved to 15,000 fans that songs from both Kid A and Amnesiac sound pretty decent live and that, yes, they still like to rock out every so often. So much for being studio rats.

Early on in the 24-song set, munchkin-sized head 'Head Thom Yorke acknowledged the slowly fading sunlight behind the concert stage. "It'll get dark soon," he promised following a quick version of "Lucky". "So it'll get better."

It wouldn't for those expecting to hear some of the band's earlier, more melodic hits such as "Creep", "Fake Plastic Trees" and "High and Dry" - AWOL on the Vancouver set list, which has changed nightly during the first few dates of the band's North American tour.

Instead, Radiohead went deep on the better tracks from this month's Amnesiac disc ("Pyramid Song", "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box", "Knives Out", etc.) and the landmark 1997's OK Computer ("Karma Police", "Paranoid Android", "No Surprises" and more).

Wearing a blue "Atari" shirt and pointy-toe leather shoes that made him look even more elfin, Yorke was in command from the start. When he wasn't dishing out dry humor ("on-stage banter, on-stage banter," he mumbled into the mic as roadies hauled out the Rhodes keyboard for "Morning Bell"), the singer was signalling changes to the band with a quick hand gesture or jerking back and forth like a man possessed. It was quite a sight for the couple thousand of adoring fans who managed to scoop tickets to the steel-gated "head zone" in front of the stage.

Unfortunately, this crowd-separation tactic worked to diffuse what energy the typically laidback Vancouver audience had brought to the show. By the time "Just" soared out of the speakers twelve songs in, the crowd had perked up to reveal some signs of actual movement. It didn't help that the security goons worked to eject anyone even contemplating a quick moshing or crowd surfing (like the poor guy thrown out during the blissful electronica rumble of "Idioteque").

By "Paranoid Android" (another choice selection from OK Computer), the guitar explosions from Ed O'Brien and Jonny Greenwood were cutting into Yorke's warble and the concert lights were in full rock-concert mode as the West Coast sun set. A two-encore closer was capped by a stunning version of Karma Police, which should have been called to arrest the guy responsible for charging up to CDN $50 for T-shirts - almost the cost of a ticket to the show.

Too bad the band left behind its custom, 10,000-capacity circus tent used on their European tour last year (logistics of touring the thing around North America proved reportedly prohibitive). I'm still not convinced that Kid A and Amnesiac are all they're acclaimed to be, but at least Radiohead proved that they still know how to put on a fine show.

The Beta Band were invited along to juice the crowd into an opening-set stupor with choice, sample-driven guitar rock. From the clipped strains of Steve Miller's "Jungle Love" to the trumpet flourishes and double-drum solo, the band's set flowed like the beer in the jam-packed garden set up on the grass at the back of T-Bird stadium. Expect good things from The Beta Band's sophomore disc, Hot Shots II, in stores July 17.