Radiohead have been described as "Queen with self-esteem problems"; even if Thom Yorke has yet to step out in ballet slippers and a snug flesh-coloured leotard, it's an oddly appropriate comparison. As with Queen, Radiohead are a well-educated unit of seemingly endless talent and ambition, one who encapsulate this angst-ridden era as memorably as Queen took in the bombast of the '70s and self-gratification of the '80s.

Now, however, Radiohead are offering up their version of Queen 's 1982 Hot Space album - the record on which the Mercury crew delved fully into dance textures and, resultingly, alienated a good portion of their rock-head audience. Radiohead's Kid A album is a similarly uncomfortable conceit, a largely ill-advised venture that aims to produce challenging, innovatory music by approximating the records the Warp and Mo' Wax labels were releasing five years ago.

Admittedly, tonight, songs like 'Optimistic', 'Morning Bell' and 'The National Anthem' sound far removed from their sterile recorded incarnations although it remains inevitable that these interesting, astringent new sounds should be drowned out by the euphoric roar that greets the following 'Airbag' and 'Karma Police'. And rightly so; these are the songs that got Radiohead the job, the remarkable mechanisms that fired them to their sainted status. Thus, the sight of Jonny Greenwood ushering in the vertiginously thrilling opening chords of 'My Iron Lung' is perhaps always going to prevail over Ed O'Brien gamely adding 'Chopsticks' -style piano to the lumbering new tones of 'In Limbo'.

As they move into 'Street Spirit (Fade Out)' and an emphatically victorious 'Paranoid Android' there's little chance of the mind dwelling on the way this supposedly "logo-free" event confers beer-tent monopoly status on the Anheuser-Busch corporation and their notoriously mediocre Budweiser product.

The encores are remarkable, taking in a beauteously anthemic 'Fake Plastic Trees', 'Talk Show Host' and, to close, 'Exit Music (From A Film)', stunning in its elegance and resolution. Perhaps, most encouragingly though, was the as-yet unrecorded new piece 'Egyptian Song'. An effortlessly emotive piano ballad with Colin Greenwood on double bass, as with the Queen story, it surely heralds wonderful future events.

After Hot Space, Freddie and friends returned with the brilliantly back-to-what-we-know album The Works. This is surely the way way forward for Radiohead - immense tunes and all the band in drag for Top Of The Pops.

-Lanoe Hawker

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