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On a meadow a cluster of tents was set up. We got there by bus, most of us 10.000 or so ticketholders. On the ride from the station there was a very obvious sense of wonder and anticipation and once you saw the big blue tent with the red lights pulsating quickly from its tops you could not help but feel a slight rush of childlike excitement run through your spine. This was it. All would be revealed. Radiohead was back with new material, half of it you might have heard already through shady channels, most of it you haven't. This was to be one of the more special locations so far; a venue in the form of a tiny festival fairground (a mini-Lowlands if you will since a selection of the gear from that festival was used to surround the tent) created for the sole purpose of hosting two concerts over a weekend.
It's well documented that on the crippling, two year long OK Computer-tour Radiohead really had gotten their fill of drab, airport-like concert halls with their lousy acoustics and commercialized, fan-unfriendly atmosphere. This time the band went out of their way to have a circustent hybrid designed and built especially for their touring purposes and in doing so they basically created their own venue, custom made to meet their particular acoustic needs, state-of-the-art lightshow, etc. This approach is quite unprecedented and given the result one can only hope that other bands pick up on it if given the possibility.
We got there a bit late; opening acts Sigur Ros were busy playing the last two songs of their set. The little I got to hear of it pretty much met my expectations of expansive, intoxicating yet very accessible post-rock played by four young shoegazers (talk about an endangered species!). All under bright, very expensive-looking purple spotlights. As I moved ahead in the crowd to get a better view of the proceedings I was stopped a little over halfway through the tent by a fence separating the crammed mass of the crowd from a more spacious business-class like section containing a group of 200 audience members who just happened to have gotten in early. They got to have a bit more space to rock out and wander while the rest of us battery-chickens, who paid just as much for a ticket, couldn't even move out to get beer and be able to come back where we were. Can somebody mail me the logic behind this idea?! Now for the show..
The band came out and started with two new songs; a gritty rendition of "The National Anthem" (not one of my faves on the new record but excellent on the podium) and "Morning Bell", which got an already happy-looking Thom Yorke behind the keys for the first time in the show. This was followed by "Lucky" which almost literally lifted me, eyes shut, spine slightly arched, off my feet. This song obviously hasn't lost its effect on me yet and it definitely set the mood for the night. Three new songs that are not on "Kid A" were played, the downcast, kinda muddled "You And Whose Army", the jazzy, well built-up "Dollars & Cents", and the spiky, almost metronome, mantra-like "I Might Be Wrong". These songs may very well appear on the follow-up, to be released sometime next spring and showing a return once again to a slightly more conventional sound, but still with emphasis on the groove.
Despite the apparent surplus in new material the band put out a very balanced setlist, with lots of material from "The Bends" and "OK Computer". Even the by now almost archaic-sounding b-side "Pearly" was dished out, showing that if they chose to they could still beat the living crap out of The Bluetones. The overall effect of this was not only a cross section of the band's career, it also laid bare how, as Jonny Greenwood once put it, paint-by-numbers the songs before "Kid A" really are in contrast to the fascinatingly (deceptively) rich and complex new stuff. Really. "Exit Music", "Karma Police", "Just" and "The Bends" (the latter two sung in an almost bored sneer by Yorke) never sounded this stale, and in most cases it wasn't even the band's fault. It's just that the new songs are so damn good.
"Paranoid Android", "Airbag", "Climbing Up The Walls" and the above mentioned "Lucky" however did sound like they may stand the test of time as the band will progress even further. The real excitement was to be found, easily, in the new songs and (surprise!) how the audience reacted to them. I never thought I'd live to see 10.000 pairs of hands clapping that hard to songs as unlikely as "Everything In Its Right Place" (Jonny Greenwood sampling Thom real-time) and "Idioteque" in which Thom danced franticly and Phil Selway sounded like he hadn't found his way around the song yet, often being out of place and sometimes even out of sync in that tune), but it happened. "Kid A", commercial suicide? I hereby rest my case.
Three topselling albums and page after page of the highest critical acclaim spanning almost a decade, a reputation as one of the greatest bands of the moment, maybe of all time, none of all this means a thing. It's all words to ponder on the minute before you die, as interesting maybe as yesterday's paper. It simply doesn't matter if you're still hungry, if you're wise and brave enough to walk away and break with the past, to make new rules, set new standards. Radiohead, like it or not, is that wise and brave a group of people. That night I saw a band that despite every expectation ("could there be a better record after OK Computer?") is still growing, is still capable of making mistakes but also of making one feel every pore and droplet of sweat on one's body. Goosebumps with every exalting breath. Yeah, there'll probably be even better bands out there but none of them can even come close to the means Radiohead dispose of to give their audiences the full-on treatment. Apart from the front-section issue this new approach suits the band well. Excellent show.
http://www.kindamuzik.net/live/radiohead/radiohead-everything-in-its-right-place/318/
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