Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to be one of the lucky few to attend Radiohead at the O2.
Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to be one of the lucky few to attend Radiohead at the O2. After 9 years of non-activity, with many theorising that Radiohead as we know it was over, show teasers popped up in several European cities. They were coming back, for a limited and exclusive set of shows. Respectively playing four nights in Madrid, Bologna, London, Copenhagen, and Berlin, they are back; not teasing an album (yet?), but playing curated sets of Radiohead classics each night, similar to the strategy of Oasis this summer. The anticipation was palpable, and this certainly showed in the ticket sales, with sky-high demand. Tickets secured against-the-odds, our journey to the venue felt less like a commute and more like a ceremonial trek.
Starting on the other side of Greenwich, we took on a pilgrimage of sorts, in the bitter cold, wrapped up to our eyes in coats: climbing up through Greenwich Park to the Royal Observatory, we sated our eyes with a panoramic view across central London, commercial airliners streaking through the sky everywhere you could look. Canary Wharf was dead ahead, St Paul’s juxtaposed against a backdrop of sky-touching metal-and-glass monoliths. The O2, our final destination, viewable to our right; the Thames path we were taking illuminated, indicative of a quest to take on. We took it on, mistakenly finding ourselves weaving through industrial estates and old dockland. Oops. Finally, we make it, greeted by pints valued at £8.25 and an eclectic Radiohead-themed DJ-set which flitted between electronic bangers and entries of the more melancholic variety.
Queuing, baggage-storing, merch-ing, and drinking; we finally settled into our seats to enjoy 30 minutes of agonising tease. Suspended rectangular screen panels flashed a clinical white, synchronised with ever-faster bursts of synth. The band played on a dodecagonal island, surrounded by a sea of people lucky enough to score standing tickets. Finally, the panels raised; the synth fell away – the screeching chords of ‘Planet Telex’ began to play, launching into two hours of diverse, genre-crossing mayhem.
While I said they played classics, they didn’t only stick to their most popular material. Some of my favourites are the most divisive. ‘Bloom’, from ‘The King of Limbs’ (which, at release, critics considered a rare misfire), was a dizzying affair: I love when songs sound as if they could fall apart at any moment, complexity and layering of different rhythms, instruments, intensities.
Another highlight was ‘There, There’, from the more acclaimed ‘Hail to the Thief’. It was just gorgeous – an anthem of denial, punctuated with a pounding, rhythmic beat, ‘There, There’ preaches seeing and not believing. Released in 2003, this track is one of many that expresses deep frustration with contemporary political realities: Bush elected, deep into the War on Terror, a general feeling of unbelonging and dissatisfaction. Politicians preached that we should ignore things we could see with our very eyes:
“Just ‘cause you feel it
Doesn’t mean it’s there”.
It must be said that they felt their most powerful playing the undisputed greats, one of which being ‘Just’ from ‘the Bends’. The show can be represented by their performance of this song, accurately:
During the climax, Greenwood hits crescendo, guitar whirring and whining.
Thom cries along, “You do it to yourself, you do” - it’s frantic, intense.
Selway pounds the drums as the music swells around him.
A bald man tumbled from two rows above me, falling into my seat, upside down: head on the floor, backside to the sky – as the song fades out, two others and I lift him up, almost biblical: he is raised, apologetic and embarrassed, just in time for the plucky opening notes of Karma Police.
Radiohead were intense, eclectic, driving. They saturated the room, twenty-thousand strong, and it is clear to me they have more in the tank yet...