Radiohead/ Asian Dub Foundation
International Arena
Cardiff
November 24, 2003

Rating: 3.5/5

Galvanising their creative birthright to follow nothing and no-one, we could either travel with them or get off at the next stop. A sell-out tour with eight thousand here tonight shows the mass bended knee.

Keeping to their manifesto of "if you wanna listen, then fine," five guys amble lethargically on stage before a Jonny Greenwood-sampled Thom Yorke proceeds to shout "Car-diff" throughout opener 'The Gloaming'. Slender screens showing grainy photo-booth movie strips of the action flank the stages, disengaging things slightly further.

Thankfully, current album Hail To The Thief has been around long enough to acclimatise us to a lot of the material that's appreciated tonight, with 'Myxomatosis' making short shrift of the emotions and 'We Suck Young Blood' morphing into a stunted Darkness clap-along. But smatterings of Kid A and especially OK Computer are embraced like the return of dead children. 'Paranoid Android', 'Karma Police' and 'Lucky' release everyone into an ecstatic, expressive lather, even the band. Possible tour fatigue, along with the steely nerve needed to delve amongst the raw turmoil of HTTT makes 'Idioteque' a port in a storm for both sides of the safety barrier. For this brief moment, their creative, communicative essence bursts into an all-consuming inferno. The final encore ends with 'Everything In Its Right Place', executed at breakneck speed but as a consequence, sadly bleached of its sensitivity.

I wanted to be immersed into magic tonight but the ultimate feeling is one of something sadly unrequited. That unspoken, emotional element is their greatest asset but its distance in a live setting such as this can also be their Achilles heel.

A window to the soul, or soulless?

Jane Oriel

Drowned In Sound
27.11.03