Radiohead live @ the O2: Nothing to Fear, Nothing to Doubt

So, Radiohead were pretty awesome. Lots of new material as expected, and an airing for lesser-known songs like These Are My Twisted Words, which they played the last time we saw them at Reading in 2009. The intro of Everything In Its Right Place contained a few verses of The One I Love by REM - a tribute to one of Radiohead's musical touchstones, who split up this year. Here's Reckoner. Warning: Thom's voice is /absolutely ridiculous/.

They're a subtly different band than they were the last time I saw them - the addition of Portishead and Tricky collaborator Clive Deamer on second drums added considerable heft to In Rainbows-era tracks like Weird Fishes. And with a CV like that, he's no doubt a real song-and-dance man to have on the tourbus, too. The version of !5 Step at the O2 seethed in a way I've always thought the recorded version should have done. See?:

And then, of course, there's Mr Greenwood. Taking time out from casually composing Oscar-nominated minimalist film scores and frightening avant garde Polish classical composers in their eighties  with his Ondes Martinot,  he was on spectacular form. Johnny's influence is all over how the current 'version' of Radiohead work - one minute he's hopping about behind a nest of keyboards and various bits and pieces during the opener Lotus Flower; the next he's frantically waving at his brother Colin (Radiohead's 'rhythm' guitarist) to get him more involved in the first few songs. I read the other day that Johnny's even programmed a piece of software that allows other members of Radiohead to 'scratch' takes they put down in the studio, DJ-style, and compose in an entirely new way. He does this kind of thing because he's a floppy-haired, rail-thin, multitalented Fucking Genius.

At times it's as if Jimi Hendrix has been given the keys to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and told to being his favourite oscillators and synths to a Radiohead show, and just mess about with them. In football parlance, Johnny is the difference on the night. He even bowed his guitar Jimmy Page-style at one point - a trick I have to try one day.

As for the gig itself - I hated the venue: big, echoey, and transparently devoted to commercial opportunities rather than ensuring that the events it stages are good or not. Sadly a sign of things to come, I think. Also, typically for a big London show, it was full of old blokes who can't tell the difference between a pause between songs towards the end of the set, and the end of the show, because they only go to one gig a year. I never thought watching Radiohead would be punctuated by the sight of men in their middle years heading up the aisles under the mistaken assumption that it'd finished, only to scamper lumpenly back once another song started.

Anywho, Radiohead played:

Lotus Flower
15 Step
Bloom
Kid A
The Daily Mail
Myxomatosis
Climbing Up the Walls
The Gloaming
Separator
These Are My Twisted Words
Like Spinning Plates
Nude
Identikit
Karma Police
Feral
Idioteque

Encore:
Pyramid Song
Staircase
Morning Mr. Magpie
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Reckoner

Encore 2:
Give Up the Ghost

There There

The One I Love

Everything In Its Right Place