Radiohead
Pyramid Stage
Glastonbury
June 28, 2003

[R.E.M.] outdid Radiohead even, whose metaphorical standing-stone was more or less engraved with their legend before they’d taken to the stage. It’s an oft-quoted opinion that there are 150,000 different Glastonbury stories every year. We’re only permitted to tell you one, and to us the punch of ‘2+2=5’ may as well have been coming from the ice cream van we could make out in our peripheral vision. “AARGH!” shrieks Thom, aware of the significance of the night, and AARGH was all they got from the PA. Only a stunning ‘Climbing Up The Walls’ could melt through and sound as it should in the first half of the set. Though everything suddenly spasms into life during ‘Go To Sleep’, oddly. And with the vocals on ‘Sail To The Moon’ amongst the most affecting things of the weekend, ‘Idioteque’ throbbing at its fattest, and the best ‘Paranoid Android’ we’ve ever seen, careering through the mesh like a flaming asteroid impact of manipulated angst, looks like they pulled it back in time. And could you argue with an audience-supported a cappella reading of ‘Karma Police’s crescendo? Or a silk-lined ‘Street Spirit’ to end with? “Peace, love, no more idiots in charge”. In the end, a triumph.

James Berry

Crud
16.07.03