concert review: radiohead @ verizon wireless amphitheater - st. louis, mo

May 15, 2008

I was going to write a review, but this pretty much sums up the night. And man, was it bloody good…

Concert Review: Radiohead in St. Louis
May 14, 2008
Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, St. Louis
By JASON HARPER, The Pitch Music Editor
Wayward Blog

“This is one from Kid A that we kind of lost sight of,” Thom Yorke told a nearly sold-out crowd (18,000 is my guess) last night in St. Louis. “It seems very pertinent now to us,” he continued, and his band, Radiohead, launched into “Optimistic.”

Pertinent, indeed. In addition to this massive-selling tour, Radiohead oughta feel pretty good about the millions it raked in after offering its latest album for sale online for as much as fans wanted to pay for it, even if that meant absolutely zero quid. I paid £10 pounds for In Rainbows and $61 plus travel expenses to see ‘em last night, and I regret nary a pence.

If I were British, I’d say Radiohead are stupendous. Instead, I say Radiohead is stupendous. Underneath a proscenium-like canopy of translucent tubes, hanging like motionless chimes, illuminated by flashing LEDs and lasers, the group played a stunning, two-hour set, seeming to enjoy every second. The reputedly sullen Yorke jigged like a 15-year-old at a rave during the group’s electronic numbers (”Idioteque,” “The Gloaming”), wobbled his head and closed his eyes while belting out faves (”Fake Plastic Trees,” “Paranoid Android” and most all the others) and stuck his eyeball in the camera over his piano in ironic menance during “You and Whose Army.” At one point early in the show, Yorke asked the audience, “How come it smells of doughnuts? Who could eat doughnuts at a time like this?”

“Doughnut sales dive,” said one of his band members, I didn’t catch which, mimicking a news broadcaster. Actually, they were smelling funnel cake, an odd thing to be snacking on at a show like this, to be sure — but the point is, these blokes had a blast.

The audience, despite being white, which goes without saying, was mostly young and fairly diverse. There were the late-20s/early-30s liberal arts NPR nerds to whom OK Computer wasn’t just an album but a sacrament that got them through finals week after finals week. There were hippies, twirling to the band’s gorgeous, apocalyptic noise, raising their arms and smiling goofy smiles as Thom sang about collapsing infrastructures, melting icecaps, the crushing systems of modern life. There were fratboys, bellowing and drinking beer. And there were groundlings, up on the lawn, a seething antbed of cotton tees and dirty knees, one-fifth of whom raised their cigarette lighters during most of the first encore — to them, Thom dedicated “Exit Music.”

I spent much of the evening — including the two-or-so hours it took both to enter and to exit the ill-located venue — wondering how Radiohead, this at heart dark and edgy and often wildly experimental British pop band, has achieved such immense fame. Aside from the fact that Radiohead’s music is sublime and never, ever dull, it’s a combination of factors: Thom Yorke’s intriguing, weakling-as-hero persona and one-of-a-kind, often-copied voice; Johnny Greenwood’s compositional genius (solidified with his score for There Will Be Blood); the band’s undertaking of one creative risk after another, from the shock of following up OK Computer with the ambient simmers of Kid A and Amnesiac, to its continually eye-catching artwork. Radiohead’s strategies have always paid off. (Note how you’ve never seen the band selling through Starbucks.) But in the end, it’s pretty much driving melody and pure, rock genius.

That purity is on display on the current tour. Looking past the bright, flashing lights, you’ll see five musicians doggedly chained to a veritably steaming array of equipment: amps, instruments, processors, patchcords and pedals. On a screen behind the band, a five-panel strip shows close-up video of each of the five members, like five closed-circuit-TV broadcasts lined up side by side. The effect is similar to the group’s recent “Thumbs Down” webcasts on YouTube, which often showed footage of the band in studio with separate cameras on each member as they rehearsed the songs from In Rainbows. Through the aid of an unmanipulated lens, the viewer sees five hardworking musicians laboring at their art, stripped yet elevated, almost like athletes sweating through intense workouts that are beyond the reach of ordinary bums like you and me.

Top of their game, those Radiohead guys. I can’t say that every song off the new one is entirely memorable in comparison with the band’s earlier work, but … holy cow, what’s next?

Set List
All I Need
Jigsaw Falling Into Place
Airbag
15 Step
Nude
Kid A
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
The Gloaming
You and Whose Army
Idioteque
Faust Arp
Videotape
Everything in Its Right Place
Reckoner
Optimistic
Bangers & Mash
Bodysnatchers

Encore 1
Exit Music (For a Film)
Myxomatosis
My Iron Lung
There There
Fake Plastic Trees

Encore 2
Pyramid Song
House of Cards
Paranoid Android

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