Location: Vila Manin / Codroipo / Italy
Concert date: September 26, 2012
Attendance: 10,000
Ticket price: €50
Just when I think my overloaded senses have no room left to take in the ecstasy we’re witnessing, the whole mini cosmos that has formed at Vila Manin goes through another big bang and explodes in all colors, sounds and vibrations, recreating itself as a supernatural experience of sensory synesthesia, derealization and depersonalization. And I wasn’t even on drugs. And Thom Yorke danced, laughed and cracked jokes at the Italians’ expense like never before. Okay, that sounds even more surreal than what came before… But it happened. Mini cosmos, big bang, weird neuropsychological states, a laughing Thom Yorke. I honestly don’t know which one is stranger. But we lived through all of it – and more.
Radiohead probably don’t need much of an introduction. But let’s say, for the purposes of this report, that they’re one of the most progressive bands on today’s music scene, in the sense that their sound keeps evolving, that the band evolves every moment with every creation, that their experimentalism is their trademark. Between their debut Pablo Honey and their latest album The King of Limbs there’s practically as much difference as between the albums Ok Computer and Kid A, which are their third and fourth. That alone says a ton about the nature of the band, about the very entity the name Radiohead stands for. Their sound over the last few records, though, has been marked by Yorke’s ever stronger love affair with electronic music. Their concerts match: with the help of 18 flying LED monitors they aim to create a musical trance, in no way recreating the typical pomp of rock, but coming closer to a VJ-style interpretation of a light show. Maybe it’s precisely because of this growing involvement in electronic music that Yorke picked the musician Daniel Victor Snaith, who goes by the alias Caribou, as the support act for his band.
The whole evening in Italy, at the gorgeous Vila Manin, was opened by the touring lineup of the otherwise one-man band Caribou. A sort of electronic shoegaze, backed by psychedelic vocals and dance rhythms, confirmed the incredible acoustics of the Vila Manin atrium, which by the time the set began was already wading a bit in the soaked grass – this is a part of Italy where the weather changes practically every second, where a clear sky turns into a black storm in an instant. And vice versa. This time, luckily, it was the latter. The rain stopped right before Caribou’s set. So we could actually see the stage, because the crowd of open umbrellas (though not of phones, cameras and even iPads) came down.
Caribou rocked us nicely into atmospheric dance rhythms, and as someone who only vaguely knows the band (with a few prejudices going in), I have to admit the opening act did a great job. I’ll never get over the typical electronic »untz-untz« beat that showed up here too, though only as the most distant, almost metronomic beat, but it was so often overshadowed by fantastic shoegazey stretching and the building of ambient dynamics that I probably just shoved it somewhere deep inside and stopped caring about it. And after the final Caribou track »Sun«, it poured again. First applause, then rain.
And then came the nervous waiting. The rain kept falling, and the cosmopolitan crowd in front of us (with hardly any actual Italians among them) was already blocking our view of the stage. Even though all this – rain, lightning, dark sky, escaping moonlight and similar almost clichéd gloomy elements – is probably the ideal atmosphere for Radiohead’s music, I’d rather have seen Thom Yorke, the Greenwood brothers, O’Brien and Selway. And the second drummer. Yes, Radiohead had two drummers – whom I could see right from the start of the set, since, just like before Caribou, the rain stopped at exactly the right moment.
Since this is a tour in support of the band’s latest album The King of Limbs (which actually came out last February, but the tour is still going because of the postponed summer dates, where the stage accident happened), the band opened the show, as expected, with a single from the album – »Lotus Flower«. Their newest album has split their fans somewhat, especially those who prefer 90s Radiohead. But this time even they couldn’t object to anything, because The King of Limbs shines brightest live. With booming sound and a breathtakingly synchronized light show. With improvisational elements and on-the-spot sound manipulation. And with a dancing Yorke who forgets the lyrics mid-song.
Most of the material played also came from the band’s post-2000 output, where that electronic-inspired evolution maybe kicked off with Kid A. Naturally, the songs from the 90s were played by today’s Radiohead, not the one from 15 years ago. »Airbag«, »Climbing Up the Walls«, »Planet Telex«, »Street Spirit« and especially »Paranoid Android« got an experimental-electronic makeover (and I really mean seriously experimental and deep electronica) and were upgraded with incredible improv moments from Jonny’s guitar and Yorke’s vocals. I especially want to single out »Paranoid Android«. Because next to the live version we witnessed, the studio »Paranoid Android« sounds like the most generic rock song ever. Jonny Greenwood’s freeform, off-rhythm and generally virtuosic but unpretentious noodling on guitar and Thom Yorke’s occasional falsetto, as he forgot the lyrics again, then tried to redeem himself and flubbed it again and ended the momentary dementia with »Fuck it!« and »Okay, I know this part…«… all of that is simply a one-of-a-kind experience. Literally one-of-a-kind, because Radiohead change the arrangements at every show (even though the setlists stay pretty close), but above all because the antisocial, grumpy Thom Yorke is usually far less in the mood. A smile, nonstop dancing and joking to this extent is a great rarity for him. Among other things, he also took a jab at Berlusconi, to whom he dedicated the song »Daily Mail« (actually a critique of British journalism), claiming that Berlusconi does everything to please the media, bowing to them at every step.
Overall, the whole concert was an extensive showcase of the musical brilliance of the entire band, with Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood standing out, of course. And not just musically – visually and atmospherically, on a sensory level, the band pulls off exactly what they perhaps don’t want to, or didn’t want to. Because Thom’s detachment, his short, drawn-out replies and general coldness have become such a part of the band’s overall image that it’s exactly what brings them closer to the audience at shows. And that’s also why his little intentional or unintentional slip-ups, his goofiness (when between songs he suddenly started muttering unintelligible words and making weird guttural sounds) and the whole picture come across so strongly that it simply can’t help but win over every single listener.
As I was flinging my head and whole body in every possible direction in my own ecstasy mid-show, I noticed how apathetic the audience around me actually was. The 10,000-headed crowd barely showed signs of life. Through all the musical mayhem, all the nirvana-esque racket and the explosively penetrating show, hardly anyone was visibly enjoying themselves. Fine, body-grooving is up to each individual. But when Radiohead left the stage for the first time, the apathy reappeared. Barely-there applause, barely audible voices, barely perceptible pounding hearts. And that after »Paranoid Android«! Radiohead, of course, made us beg. They didn’t come back until the clapping had at least gained some respectable decibels. And they did that twice. An apathetic crowd and waiting Radiohead.
The close of the two-and-a-half-hour show was, true to the band’s style, ideal. Expected and unexpected at once. Anyone who’d glanced at the setlists of earlier shows knew the end would probably belong to »Idioteque«. That was the expected part. The unexpected part was the performance itself, which was, once again, in the spirit of modern Radiohead and their experimentalism and electronic fusion. »Iditoteque«, that sensual, ambient track from Kid A, grew at its end into… drum’n’bass. And Thom Yorke has probably never flung himself around as much as he did right then.
After two and a half hours I’d still have wanted more. Not more hits, which weren’t there, but more of what we were witnessing. At the same time, I know the ending was ideal and natural and that any continuation would only have hurt the overall picture of the carefully conceived concert. Now, in retrospect, even the mistakes that happened – here I mainly mean Yorke forgetting the lyrics – feel like fundamental parts of the show, like something almost taken for granted, that last note on the staff that gave the whole evening its distinctive character, a human Thom and altogether a few more unforgettable moments. Those mistakes made a surreally fantastic show human, which is what stays with you most in the end and what makes identifying with musicians possible at all. Imperfection will always be more attractive than perfection. Radiohead, one of the biggest bands that doesn’t want to be one, with an antisocial, idolized frontman who doesn’t want that role, are perfect in their unique imperfection.
Once again, safe transport was taken care of by the crew from the travel agency Koncerti.net.
Setlist
Lotus Flower
Airbag
Bloom
The Daily Mail
Myxomatosis
The Gloaming
Separator
Climbing Up the Walls
Spinning Plates/Pyramid Song
Nude
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Reckoner
There There
The National Anthem
Feral
Paranoid Android
—encore—
How to Disappear Completely
Planet Telex
Staircase
Morning Mr. Magpie
Street Spirit (Fade Out)
—2nd encore—
Give Up the Ghost
Everything In Its Right Place
Idioteque
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