Author: Josh Modell / Source: Variety
CHICAGO — No offense to the many massive outdoor festivals that Radiohead have headlined over the years, but there’s nothing like seeing them indoors, in a space that can project both their brightest and darkest tendencies. Friday night’s show at the United Center kicked off an 18-date North American tour that will find them packing arenas instead of sprawling fields, playing to roughly 20,000 fans every night instead of exponentially more at Coachella or Lollapalooza.
It’d be a stretch to call either experience “intimate,” but one is far closer to it.Over more than two hours and two dozen songs, the band both indulged their need to get weird and embraced their most populist tendencies — occasionally in the same moment, but mostly by building and releasing tension in roughly 30-minute cycles. Considering that they’ve been at it for more than 25 years, it’s no surprise that Radiohead have setlists down to a science.
They started off on Friday with the near-ambient “Daydreaming,” a quiet, piano-driven song accented visually by a sea of strobes, and the folky, similarly subdued “Desert Island Disk,” both from their latest, 2016’s “A Moon Shaped Pool.” (Though they didn’t play any brand-new material, as ever, a Radiohead album could drop from the sky at any moment — they’ve also perfected the art of the surprise release.) Singer Thom Yorke, top-knotted and grizzly bearded, tossed his leather jacket before starting “Ful Stop,” stalking the stage with a small keyboard cradled in his arm and turning the song — which chugs along dreamily on “Pool” — into sneering electro-punk.
After that…
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