Radiohead

Clinic’s surgically sterilised set (minus costumes…how unfair) comes to a close. As a warm up they failed slightly by being rather wooden. In fact I seem to remember one of them moving his foot once, which was the highlight of their unexciting set. The songs were note perfect, but they seemed to be rehearsing. But where was the performance? I thought they were the roadies tuning up.

“Radiohead request no moshing or crowd surfing. Thank you.”

There is more than a wiff of expectancy in the air; it’s more like a stench. In between sets we sit down, five minutes later there is a roar from the crowd. We get up. We peer between various peoples’ heads, no Radiohead. It was a false alarm folks, the track on the backing tape had just finished. This is repeated about 7 times, their Miserableness’s are taking their time aren’t they?

At long last Radiohead take to the stage, the crowd roars and they launch into “National Anthem”. As the set progresses the notoriously shy Thom Yorke seems to lose himself more and more to the music. Eyes closed, head waggling in a way that would rival a nodding dog car toy he seems to be enjoying himself. Ed O'Brien and Johnny Greenwood obsessively study their guitar cords, fringes flopping forward. The stage is backed by a screen that either act as an atmospheric backdrop, or which contains a weird laser line that oscilates to the music, and mesmerises the audience therefore meaning that not many people do mosh, we’re all to too busy looking at that laser line. Stranger things are afoot. Thom Yorke morphs in a shaman in Idiothéque. By Everything In The Right Place he’s become a voodoo preacher and gets the audience clapping whilst doing funny little Ali G hand signals.

The set relies quite heavily on new material, there are songs so new they aren’t on Kid A. One is introduced by Thom as “Er…Probably something to do with pyramids”. A blip in the performance comes when he fuck’s up the beginning to No Surprises. “Shall we go now?”, he jokes. When his organ isn’t tuned properly for Motion Picture Soundtrack the answer is “aah fuck it”. And he plays anyway. It’s a far cry from the belligerent statement at the beginning of the gig where he looks down to the photographer’s pit and proclaims “I’m not going to say anything more tonight because enough shit has been said already.” This belligerence returns in the encore as he has a rant at the Tibetan government.

Definitely worth the wait.