Radiohead
Glasgow Green
September 28, 2000

Radiohead has never stuck to a formula. Whereas Britpop comrades such as Oasis or Manic Street Preachers have always stayed within the definable boundaries of what is pop, Radiohead's Thom Yorke and crew have always done what they wanted and gotten away with it.

The band's uniqueness isn't found just in the music, but carries over into all aspects of their current tour. Tickets to the Glasgow Green show on Thursday (9/28) were red and black, with printed absurdities like "giant cogs turn" and "last remaining polar bears." And it was under the big top of Radiohead's heralded blue tent, lit with strings of red and white lights, that the twenty-something crowd experienced two hours of wonderment.

Radiohead mesmerized the audience with dark, dreamy numbers such as "Motion Picture Soundtrack," while the driving "Everything in Its Right Place" was heavy with repetitive stream-of-conscious lyrics like "yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon." New songs like "The National Anthem" and "Kid A" showed that Radiohead is continuing to move away from the frantic guitars of Pablo Honey and The Bends, and back into the bass-and-keyboard territory that they first staked on OK Computer.

In the band's 22-song set, there was also room for old favorites such as "Iron Lung," "No Surprises" and "Paranoid Android" which had the massive crowd cheering and singing along. The best-delivered classic, though, was "Karma Police" amazing the audience with an awesome wall of guitar sound.

Although Radiohead may have changed the musical components of its latest album, its offerings continue to be eerie and overwhelming. There is nothing light about Kid A or any of the group's previous material. Progress for Radiohead is not achieved by reformatting its original style to make it sleeker and shinier, but by continuing to reach deeper into Pandora's box and pulling out the strange things that lurk there.

-Alexa Williamson

LiveDaily
29.09.00