Radiohead Review – The Apocalypse Poets Return to Brutal Brutality | Radiohead

AIt’s been nearly 10 years since Radiohead released a new record, and more than seven years since we last saw them on stage. Living through that period was like moving faster and faster towards a future that their songs often seemed so anxious about. Animal-borne diseases and invading armies, shelters and endless rainstorms, falling skies, crumbling infrastructure – all of this is foreshadowed in the lyrics of the always troubled Thom Yorke.

His reputation as a fortune teller may have been exaggerated as the band’s legend has grown in their absence, but if the band’s frontman is a genius (the jury is still out and may never return, its verdict deferred more by politics than music) he’s hardly the only huge talent in the line-up. For all the great records Yorke has made recently, including several with bandmate Jonny Greenwood in their loose trio The Smile, the faithful would spend a geological age seeing the full five back together.

Now, without warning, nor any particular reason, nor any new music to sell to us (that we know of), they are back to play short residencies in a few European cities. As they perform in the round, they take and switch positions behind a thin projection screen that initially appears like a kind of shield. As it turns out, there is no need for such protection. This is not a fragile resurgence.

“The crust is broken, the juices are flowing,” Yorke sings on opener Let Down, and it only makes sense that they would start again with this song. A deep cut from OK Computer that has been a long-time fan favorite, its recent adoption by teens on TikTok has given the band the closest they’ve come to a major hit this century. Gorgeous, strangely weightless, gently self-mocking – Yorke’s biting joke about his tendency toward maudlin “bullshit” might be as off-putting as Kafka’s – it strikes a strange tone of hope against doubt, passed down from Generation X to Generation Z.

On this outing, the shimmer of sound and Greenwood’s curious guitar melody (played in a different time signature from the other instruments) are given massive gravitas by an almost overpowering rhythm section. This sets the tone for the night as well, with the top end occasionally suffering from the cavernous effect common in arenas of this size, while drummer Phil Selway, co-percussionist Clive Diemer and Johnny’s guitarist brother Colin compensate with a stunning display of power on the mid to late career tracks 2+2=5, Bloom and Full Stop.

The elder Greenwood has always been Radiohead’s secret weapon, his style suggesting a nice cuppa while his playing can range from loving-man spirituality to borderline brutality. His basslines have led the listener through the most forbidding sections of their studio material and tonight’s selections from Kid A – Everything In Its Right Place, Idioteque – complete their 25-year transition from icy sonic shocks to floor-filling, crowd-pleasing heaters.

By 15 Steps, even the upper echelons of the sit-down sections are bouncing like children to those difficult drum patterns as Yorke reminds them that “it’s all about us,” whatever “this” is. Old age…or death, most likely. Yorke is now almost 60 and is lively as hell, but also sporting a gray dogfish beard as he dances little jigs around the deck to the tune of the national anthem and a wonderful bass riff that sounds like he wrote it when he was 16.

Yorke has always kept an eye out for the ghosts of old men like Mick Jagger, one ear out for the sound of old acts turning their wheels. That’s not how Radiohead sound here at all. Perhaps their fanbase is more prone to purism and perversion than others, and perhaps some will inevitably object to the relative lack of selection from the albums A Moon Shaped Pool or The Bends, although beloved early single Fake Plastic Trees “Blows Through the Roof” on that line is more explosive than the recorded version.

In the past, live performances have expressed Radiohead’s clear comfort with being outside the studio, relieving the compositional pressure that seemed to destroy them almost every time. Their energy tonight may mean something else, but anyone who loved this band is sure to be relieved – it’s not just fun, it’s absolute joy. York, for his part, says little more than “thank you.” There are many who feel he should have said much more, and much louder, in recent years. And there are others who remember well the nervous young man who seemed so awed by the speed and direction of our supposed progress in the early days of the iMac, and who still elects him to be the same fellow who serenades us in our present state of terminal velocity.

Let down
2 + 2 = 5
Sit. Stand up
Thrive
lucky
Full stop
Darkness
Mucinous tumor
No surprises
videotape
Exotic fish/arpegi
Everything is in its right place
15 steps
National anthem
Daydreaming
A wolf at the door
Body snatchers
foolish

Appearance

Fake plastic trees
A homesick alien underground
Paranoid robot
How to completely disappear
Whose army are you and?
There there
Karma Police