Live Review: Radiohead

As we sit on the grass outside the venue waiting for tardy plus ones, a young dude approaches with a desperate look on his face. He explains that he's travelled all the way down from Canberra on the off chance he can purchase two tickets for tonight's Radiohead show. Considering scalpers/arseholes have been reselling tickets on eBay for around $500, we don't like his chances but wish him all the best.      

Volunteers with clipboards assemble just inside the arena turnstiles and of course we sign the Australia: Stand Up For Tibet petition. We learn from the kid holding the clipboard that he'll be admitted into the GA section just in time to watch Radiohead for his troubles. He's suitably chuffed. Some fans in the house tonight would have been forced to obtain refunds back in 2004 when Radiohead cancelled their final Melbourne show due to Thom Yorke's illness. We're on tenterhooks inside the stadium, willing the band to appear. Seeing multitudinous happy snaps of Radiohead's stage set-up on Facebook, since all other states got to witness the band's majesty ahead of us, could never adequately prepare us for the subsequent two hours. 

Fittingly ­– since it was our first taste of King Of Limbs, which is also this particular Radiohead tour name – the band open with Lotus Flower. A dozen suspended LED tiles hover above the stage, creating an eerie Big Brother (as in George Orwell's 1984) element: all constantly reposition, both horizontally and vertically, within the stage space as if leaning in for a closer monitoring. Yorke brandishes triple maraca action and immediately shows us how to dance to these complex time signatures: like a jellyfish being electrocuted, it seems. His tortured soul vocals take us back through unresolved emotional pain like regression therapy.

There are times when three sets of drumsticks pummel skins: two bald drummers on upstage risers – Phil Selway and Portishead's Clive Deamer (Radiohead's touring second drummer) – plus Jonny Greenwood, whose hair paints wild invisible arcs in the air behind his stage-level kit. Selway and Deamer drum in perfect unison while Greenwood takes care of the fills. Colin Greenwood's bass penetrates your spine and guitarist Ed O'Brien cups his hands around his mouth where necessary to flawlessly replicate BVs. Myxomatosis proves this band is comprised of human metronomes. The fact that Yorke's no oil painting adds to the pathos and that ponytail certainly does him no favours. Quieter moments such as Videotape showcase Yorke solo at the piano, which serves to highlight the dervish tracks such as Bodysnatchers. At times the backdrop resembles an intricate 3D mosaic made of bronze.

The LED tiles join and lower to form a makeshift roof, limiting the height under which the band perform and illuminating the musicians as if we're being given a rare glimpse inside their rehearsal crypt. Paranoid Android borders on terrifying; the combination of notes is so perfect we fear hearing this sequence performed live will cost us – like hearing an owl howl thrice means you will soon die. But it's the perfectly executed song segues that totally do us in: There There (such wounded guitar sounds!) into Karma Police (cue deafening crowd sing-along that temporarily summarises our collective consciousness: “And for a minute there/I lost myself/I lost myself”) and a segment of (Björk's) Unravel into Everything In Its Right Place, for which a Tibetan flag adorns Yorke's electric piano. The two encores equal half the amount of songs presented in the main set, but it's still not long enough. 

The only thing that could've possibly made this experience better, is the inclusion of Creep. And mainly to satisfy our desire to hear both this song and Beck's Loser (which we did at Harvest festival) in the same week – a twofold celebration of the underdog. Radiohead magnify the beauty in misery.