This may be remembered as the year that Radiohead did things their way - and the year they kissed an unfond farewell to pretending to be a stadium rock band. The year they made an album that dared to move away from a reliance on Jonny Greenwood’s guitar or Thom Yorke’s haunted voice. The year they refused to release videos or singles to promote it. The year they toured in a giant tent to get away from stadiums and corporate advertising.

You might be forgiven for thinking that Thom Yorke and company would prefer nothing less than barricade themselves in their studio and occasionally broadcast their music from loudspeakers. But even if they hit the year 2000 at their most quietly bloodyminded, their shows are still a spectacle.

The giant tent is bedecked in lights, three black & white screens hang above the crowd showing indistinct visions of the band on stage. This is not slick super-screen action, just as Radiohead’s new music isn’t bold air-punching anthems.

Much of the night is drawn from Kid A and the album to follow sometime next year. The rumbling, throaty bass of ‘The National Anthem’ kicks things off, a menacing, brooding epic. They don’t have the jazz brass meltdown at the end but this is still strange stuff. A few songs later ‘My Iron Lung’ finally makes perfect sense - it’s like an early vision of Kid A’s warped mindset with its skewed rhythm and sick-sounding guitars. Only Radiohead would have released it as a single.

Radiohead play a different game than most stadium-level bands with Yorke, guitarists Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien, bassist Colin Greenwood playing musical chairs while Phil Selway bashes away in the background. All manner of strange keyboards and electronic instruments are manhandled, the Radiohead guitar army staying in their barracks.

But the setlist, given a dummy run over the summer, provides a winning mix of old and new. The queasy and unsettling ‘Talk Show Host’ makes a rare appearance alongside the swooping ‘Optimistic’, the melancholy madrigal ‘Street Spirit’ and a beautifully-rendered ‘Karma Police’, the latter made all the more goosebump-raising thanks to 10,000 voices singing “For a minute there/I lost myself”. No wonder Thom Yorke is seen to crack a smile.

They end – following an encore which includes newie ‘Knives Out’ - with the harp-dappled comedown of ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’, a sweet send-off into the rain-soaked night, the night that killed stadium rock.

Rating: 8/10

-Stephen Dowling

Eyewitness Report: It may be a proud two fingers in the face of corporate entertainment, but you’re still paying nearly £3 for a pint of flat lager outside.

Music365
26.09.00