As music lovers and concertgoers, we get used to the typical cycle of seeing a band tour only whenever they decide to release a new album. By now, however, fans of Radiohead should know that the band just doesn’t do typical. In the midst of a European and North American tour, Radiohead played two dates in San Diego on June 26 and 27 in a beautiful setting on the bay to a crowd whose tickets were purchased within minutes of going on sale in early May, with no new album due this year from the group.
Radiohead did, however, treat listeners to about nine new songs “” about half the set “” interspersed with many more familiar songs. Most material came from their last three albums: 2003’s “Hail to the Thief,” 2001’s “Amnesiac” and 2000’s “Kid A,” with two songs from their seminal 1997 album, “OK Computer,” as they kept the crowd waiting until the end for some choice tracks from 1995’s “The Bends.”
Radiohead’s sound progression has certainly been well covered through the years, but in journeying from atmospheric guitar-driven rock with straightforward, poetic lyrics to the more abstract, in terms of ambient-sounding, electronically backed rhythms and shorter, more oblique lyrics (while toying massively with that middle ground in between as well), it’s satisfying to know that to reproduce live their newer sound, the band didn’t merely press play on a beat machine and a keyboard. Instead, drummer Phil Selway laid down some very tight beats while frontman Thom Yorke or multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood took turns on keyboards. Even more impressive was when Greenwood and/or Yorke played an extra drumset over Selway for some intricate, multi-layered beats that could pass for a machine if one closed his or her eyes.
Meanwhile Yorke, always at center stage, reproduced a carbon copy of his moans and falsettos found on all their records. Dancing as only a performer of his status can get away with, he swung his arms, moved around and stayed plenty busy, although his crowd interaction was kept to a minimum.
Some of his first words, in fact, were directed not to the audience but to the many yachts anchored on the bay catching a free concert.
“I say, you in the boats out there, did you pay?” Yorke said in his Oxfordshire accent, as the crowd laughed.
The setting couldn’t have been better, located at Embarcadero Marina South behind the Convention Center. Radiohead didn’t come on until the sun set, which allowed for the use of their clever backdrop: several rhomboid screens, each of which projected a different angle of the five members playing their instruments as the moon rose behind the stage.
Their new songs are surprisingly upbeat and give fans a lot to look forward to when the new album drops next year, though the frat- and sorority-looking crowd could be seen heading back to the beer line or to the restrooms during the unfamiliar moments.
Radiohead came out for not one but two encores. While “Fake Plastic Trees” or “Creep” were nowhere to be heard, the band ran through “Fade Out” and “Just” from “The Bends.” During “Everything in Its Right Place” from “Kid A,” both Greenwood and guitarist Ed O’Brien ditched their other instruments and picked up little boxes known as Kaoss pads, which manipulated Yorke’s vocals and keyboard. One by one, each band member left the stage. O’Brien and Greenwood left these playing on an endless loop, as the stage was now empty while York’s wails could still be heard, in effect.
Finally, after a minor costume change, they came back to play one more new song, “4 Minute Warning,” and closed out with the well-known “Lucky,” from “OK Computer.”
This sort of performance, while part of a very large tour, worked well, giving the crowd sort of a “one-off” feeling, as if Radiohead were out there playing some of their favorites while also trying out new material on an adoring crowd. Whatever your opinion of their varied musical directions, their forthcoming material leaves everyone with much to look forward to.