The love affair between band and audience was in full bloom Sunday at Thunderbird Stadium

Radiohead/ The Beta Band
Thunderbird Stadium
Vancouver
June 24, 2001

Considering that Radiohead hasn't had a lucky run of it in Vancouver in years past, you'd expect them to relish a tour date here as much as a bout with one of those particularly aggressive new super diseases.

Strangely enough for a band that should attract the chin-tickling, thinking types, there've been more than the usual amount of tussles with drunken audience members each time the band has ventured this side of the border. It could explain why 1,000 or so members of the 15,000 fans at Thunderbird Stadium on Sunday night were segregated into a deep V-shaped area at the front of the stage, keeping the remainder of the crowd a good distance back behind a barricade.

Security measures were an over-reaction for a band that's more likely to get its audience luxuriating in thoughts of alienation than fat-headed violence - songs like Paranoid Android, with its bleak, heart-melting bridge and singer Thom Yorke's sad, plaintive voice drifting out from the banks of overhead speakers, into the chilly sunset (luckily for the promoter, the threat of rain disappeared behind sunny skies).

The new "Morning Bell Amnesiac", with tiny, wonky-faced Yorke behind the keyboards, got a favourable reaction, followed by OK Computer's "Lucky" and "Airbag", which have the oddly alluring dynamic that gets critics like myself blathering superlatives about Radiohead's very-important-band stature. In an age when music is governed by greasy looking guys and girls who run at the camera at every given opportunity, Radiohead is obstinate enough to release useless, blurry publicity shots and video "clips." And they've got serious art-student attitude that means they're not above griping out loud to audiences who aren't paying enough attention. No need for that on Sunday, however. We turned out to be a most faithfully mesmerized audience of worshippers, all heads turned toward Yorke, flanked by willowy guitarists Ed O'Brien and Jonny Greenwood. Yorke was the usual rag doll in motion, his body keeping time with a wobble that ran from his head through his knees - cartoony, like you might imagine Bart Simpson dancing (for the blast-off ending to "Idioteque" he adopted a maniacal pogo).

The odd-allure factor particularly kicked in on the heavenly "Exit Music" (Phil Selway's always dramatic crashing-in on the drums stirred enough audience members out of the collective lull to pummel the air) and the sweet, easy melodic joy of "No Surprises" - both songs counted among several outstanding moments in the two hour set. It was around this point that a woman in the audience next to me commented that Radiohead songs always make her envision someone dying. She'd have gotten lots of material on "Knives Out", another new song that slides perfectly in among the doodle-art sounds that Radiohead has been working with since 1997, the year of OK Computer, when they were forced to take on the mantle of serious rock artist.

They may detest their own deification as much as major league commercialism, but they've certainly got no shortage of pearls. Bent over his guitar, the multi-talented Greenwood gathered round the piano for Yorke's '40s style vocals on "You and Whose Army?", another oddly engaging song off the new album. The sound, by the way, was as good as it's going to get in an outdoor venue. Yorke didn't chat much, other than the odd, happy spirits comment or the introduction of a song, but his few words could be understood from high in the bleachers. Nothing was muddy or lost in the mix, either. Guitars and programmed sounds pulsated and ticked and reverberated as clear and hard as sheet metal snapping in the breeze. Behind every lush, atmospheric song was a wash of intentional fuzz that added to the hypnotic experimental rock mood. It might have been construed as pretentious if it hadn't been so over-the-top clever. Tapes would drone on rhythmically as beams of light flashed on and off, and purple and yellow smog blanketed the stage, the eccentric Greenwood crouched low and bobbing like a kid on a bad drug trip.

They closed the set with "Everything In Its Right Place" and came back two seconds later with the new single "I Might Be Wrong", which, like all the new songs, sounded more substantial live. Little improvisations with guitar parts and rawer, bigger sounding drums made the songs bolder, more exciting. This was an evening devoted almost entirely to the last half of Radiohead's career, the point at which they decided to enter the portal that only those with career suicide in mind would dare to enter. Turned out to be a brilliant move. While it's not always easy work piecing together the master plan behind the last three albums, the live show proved that the output has actually been a comprehensive project. It also, to the chagrin of anyone who thinks it's high time for a Radiohead backlash, solidified the very-important-band mantle.

As for Vancouver being a bad luck date, at the time this story was filed (some time around the end of the first encore) - the love affair with band and audience was in full bloom.

-Kerry Gold

Vancouver Sun
25.06.01