ALMOST 10 years have passed since Radiohead released a new record, and more than seven since they were last seen on stage. Living through that decade has felt like moving further and faster into the future that their songs often sounded so worried about. Animal-borne diseases and invading armies, bomb shelters and endless rainstorms, falling skies and collapsing infrastructure – ‘twas all foretold in the lyric sheets of the ever-fretful Thomas Yorke.
The latter’s reputation as a soothsayer has probably been overstated as the band’s myth has grown in their absence. And if the frontman is a genius – the jury is still out and may never come back in, their verdict deferred more by politics than musicianship – then he’s hardly the only monumental talent in the lineup. For all the brilliant records Yorke has made lately, including several with bandmate Jonny Greenwood in their looser-limbed trio The Smile, the faithful have been holding out a geological age to see the full five back together.
Now, without much warning, nor any particular reason to speak of, nor any new music to sell us (that we know of), here they are returning intact with short residencies in a few European European cities. Playing in the round, for the first time in decades, at Madrid’s Moviestar Arena, they take and switch positions behind a gossamer projection screen that initially seems like some kind of shield. As it turns out, no such protection is needed. This is not a fragile re-emergence.
“Shell smashed, juices flowing,” sings Yorke on opener Let Down, and it makes sense that they would start again with that one. A deep cut from OK Computer that has long been a fan favourite, its recent adoption by teens on TikTok gave the band their closest thing to a big hit this century. Gorgeous, oddly weightless, gently self-mocking – Yorke’s jokiness about his own tendency toward maudlin “drivel” might be as under-recognised as Kafka’s – it strikes a peculiar note of hope-against-doubt, bequeathed from Gen X to Gen Z.
On this outing, the shimmer of the vocal and Greenwood’s curious guitar melody (played in a different time signature to the other instruments) are given colossal oomph by an almost overpowering rhythm section. This sets the tone for the night too, as the top end sometimes suffers from the cavern effect common to arenas of this size, while drummer Phil Selway, auxiliary percussionist Chris Vatalaro, and Jonny’s bassist brother Colin compensate with a stunning show of force on mid-to-late career tracks 2+2=5, Bloom and Ful Stop.
The elder Greenwood has always been Radiohead’s secret weapon, his manner suggesting the offer of a nice cuppa while his playing can range from loverman soulfulness to borderline brutality. His basslines have walked the listener through the most forbidding passages of their studio material and tonight’s selections from Kid A – Everything In It’s Right Place, Idioteque – complete their 25-year transition from icy sonic shocks to crowd-pleasing, floor-filling heaters.
By 15 Step even the upper tiers of seated sections are bouncing like babies to those tricky drum patterns while Yorke reminds them that “it comes to us all”, whatever “it” is. Old age and/or death, most likely. He is almost 60 now and spry as hell but also grey-bearded as a sea dog while he dances little jigs around the deck to The National Anthem and its stupidly great bassline, which he apparently wrote when he was 16. Hard to know where we go from here.
Yorke has always kept one eye on the prancing spectres of elders like Mick Jagger, and one ear out for the sound of legacy acts spinning their wheels. That is absolutely not how Radiohead come across here. Their fanbase is more prone to purism and perversity than others, maybe, and some will inevitably quibble about the relative lack of choice picks from albums The A Moon Shaped Pool or The Bends, though beloved earlyish single Fake Plastic Trees “blows through the ceiling” on that line much more explosively than the recorded version.
In the past, live performance has expressed their clear relief at being out of the studio, and relieved of the compositional pressure that seemed to almost wreck them every time. Their energy tonight might mean something else, but the relief is surely felt by anyone who ever loved this band – it’s not just fun, it’s an absolute joy. Yorke, for his part, says little other than “gracias”. There are many who feel he should have said a lot more, and a lot louder, in recent years. There are others who remember well the nervy young guy who seemed so freaked out by the speed and direction of our supposed progress back in the olden days of the iMac, and would still elect him as the very fellow to sing to us in our present state of terminal velocity.
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