After a six-year absence, Radiohead returned to Boston for two sold out shows at TD Garden that was their first ever show at the venue and their first indoor performance in the Boston-area in over twenty years. Radiohead fans are an enthusiastic bunch and since the band tours both globally and infrequently, every show they play has been longed for and is likely to be the only chance to see them for several more years.
Junjun opened for Radiohead both nights and they’re an act entirely worthy of having their own article written on them. As a matter of fact, Academy Award nominee Paul Thomas Anderson directed a documentary about them. Just last year, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood was recently nominated for his own Oscar for scoring Anderson’s Phantom Thread, but a few years prior, Anderson documented Greenwood’s trip to India to collaborate with Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur and a Northwestern Indian ensemble they took to calling the Rajasthan Express. Lyrics were sang in both Indian and Hebrew and Radiohead fans got to see Radiohead’s guitarist get down on a bass.
There was a half hour gap between acts and on both nights Radiohead started things off with “Daydreaming,” the second track off 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool. When they first toured in support of the album, the Oxford-bred quintet started every concert with the first three songs off the album, but in light of the fact that they’re not touring in direct support of the album, they scaled back the emphasis on new material. With nine full length studio albums, giving their complete discography the respect it deserves is a balancing act. Night One featured five tracks off 2000’s Kid A and the following night they performed five songs off 2007’s In Rainbows. All of their releases since 1997’s OK Computer were given approximately the same attention with a margin of error of a song or two and no one album received that much more representation on the set list than the others.
“Idioteque” was one of just six songs they performed both nights and while frontman Thom Yorke’s spastic dance moves always get the audiences attention, Jonny Greenwood was the one doing the heavy lifting. Using a modular synthesizer that looked like a failed maze of multicolored wires, the “guitarist” continuously altered and manipulated the rhythm sequence that the entire song revolves around. It’s a song that is a highlight of every show they plat, but it also underscores the different roles within the band unlike any other song in their catalogue. Yorke writes the lyrics and melodies of their songs and is the foundation which all their music is built upon. But if Yorke is the foundation, Greenwood is the frame that gives the structure its shape. On “Paranoid Android,” Greenwood plays a digital synth, a Fender Rhodes electric piano, and dishes out a guitar solo as innovative and iconic as anything Tom Morello or Kurt Cobain recorded in the 90’s. Greenwood wrote all the best riffs on their guitar-centric work and when the quintet took an experimental dive into Aphex Twin territory, it was Greenwood’s exploratory utilization of equipment like the Korg Kaoss Pad and Ondes Martenot that are to credit for the haunting score supporting lyrics like, “Women and children first/Throw them on the fire.”
“Nude” is another song that made the cut both nights and brought down the house each time with equal ferocity. Yorke’s vocal solo at the end of the song is one of the best of the 21st century and its worthy of being compared to other powerhouse vocal performances such as Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky,” and “Gimme Shelter,” by the Rolling Stones. It’s an exceptionally gentle song with a soft vocal performance that floats from verse to chorus like flower pedals caught in an updraft, making the rabid audience response both nights seem that much more significant
Both shows had two encores and on the first night, they closed things out with a take on “Karma Police” that let the audience participate in a sing-along that continued after the band stopped playing. The next night they ended the show with a repeat performance of “Everything in Its Right Place” that wrapped on a series of loops which allowed Yorke and Co. to engage their Boston audience directly while the music played on.
Radiohead’s two nights in Boston were a big deal for their New England fans, and that in and of itself is significant in light of the fact that they don’t have an album to support or anything new on the horizon. Cynics had every reason to believe this tour was a cash grab that’d be phoned in but the performances were higher energy and far more varied than at least any of the West Coast dates they played after the release of A Moon Shaped Pool. New songs like “The Numbers,” and “Burn the Witch” have never sounded better and material going back to the early 90’s was played with just as much enthusiasm. Radiohead are critical darlings and rarely catch flak from the press but even by the standards of an act critics love to love, they’re as enthusiastic on stage as they’ve been in the better part of a decade.
