RADIOHEAD IS PLENTY 'OK'
Concert shows how British band has moved beyond being critics' darling
Saturday, April 4, 1998
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Rock concerts are supposed to be communal experiences -- orgies of fist- pumping, finger-wagging and righteous grimacing.
At Radiohead's brainy, sold-out show Thursday night at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, the experience was something else entirely. It was as though all the ticket-holders were given bulky old pairs of headphones at the door and were lost in their own interior dialogue with the band, oblivious to their fellow listeners -- all 8,000 of them.
People don't move much or make contorted faces when they're mesmerized, but judging by the ecstatic shrieks and hollers that echoed through the hall all evening, plenty of folks have become attached to the music of this five-piece group of guitar imperialists from England.
Opening with ``Airbag,'' the lead track from the band's breakthrough album, ``OK Computer,'' slender singer Thom Yorke planted his feet together and wagged his head like a rag doll's as bassist Colin Greenwood and drummer Phil Selway backed him with a stuttering, rumbling rhythm.
It's the consistency of Radiohead's sonic surprises that keeps its fans enraptured -- and gets the band compared, time and again, to the oft-maligned ``prog-rock'' bands of the '70s. But ``OK Computer,'' the band's third album -- a near-unanimous critics' favorite from last year that has managed to sell more than a million copies (a rarity for a writers' band) -- proves these musicians are well-versed in the history of cerebral rock.
Sure, ``Creep'' was a great Nirvana imitation, and yes, it's easy to draw lines back to Pink Floyd's heyday. But Radiohead is also a product of Britain's early-'90s ``shoe- gazer'' phenomenon, when stoner boys in long bangs played guitar parts as if they were math problems.
On Thursday, the band skipped its early hit ``Creep'' (as it did at last summer's stellar Warfield date), focusing instead on most of the tracks from ``OK Computer'' and material from 1995's ``The Bends,'' including the title track and the shimmering ``Planet Telex.''
The most distinctive element of the Radiohead sound is Yorke's wounded, transcendent voice, a chilling thing that turns songs such as ``Exit Music (for a Film)'' and ``Paranoid Android,'' both played on Thursday, into grungy minioperas.
Just as important, however, is the band's masterly use of three guitarists. Traveling on this tour with their own state-of-the-art P.A. system, the band's three front men -- Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien -- make each song a latticework of six-string textures. Yorke flails dementedly at an acoustic or electric guitar, O'Brien plays concise, elegant rhythms on his Gibson, and the multitalented Greenwood coaxes all sorts of otherworldly howls and aural fragments from his instruments.
At points in the band's set, Greenwood performed double duty on keyboards, making like Billy Preston on a soaring, Beatlesque version of ``Karma Police,'' the band's current radio hit, and simulating a theremin on the dread-drenched ``Climbing Up the Walls.'' At one point he tinkled a xylophone.
Honoring the crowd's spirited calls for more, the band played a well-deserved encore that included ``Let Down'' and ``Street Spirit (Fade Out),'' then came out one last time for a brief version of ``Lurgee,'' from its debut album.
Spiritualized, the opening band, has had a well-received album of its own (``Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space'') but took druggy musical excess to its cliched extreme in its set. But that mattered little to the capacity crowd.
``I'm on a roll this time,'' Yorke sang, with all the enthusiasm of a busy undertaker, in ``Lucky,'' midway through the set. ``I feel my luck could change.'' Though his desperate tone suggested otherwise, this band is most certainly on a roll. It sold out the Civic in a matter of days -- something Radiohead's fellow Brits Oasis couldn't quite accomplish several weeks ago.
A couple of years back, that scenario would have been preposterous. Oasis was on the way to hugeness, while Radiohead was identified with a single song and seemingly destined for art-rock obscurity. Talent like this, however, is not meant to be kept a secret.
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