That’s the question on my lips, if not everyone elses after seeing the Oxford band play Earl’s Court last week.
They’ve got the light show, and great guitar riffs and solos (e.g. on High and Dry,) and then several awkward albums (like Kid A) which they and the die hard fans clearly like, but of which everyone else is not quite so sure.
The band played for just over two hours and put on a good show. The older music from the mid 90s is superb – Creep certainly one of the finest records of that decade, and other songs such as Paranoid Android just sound better now thatn they ever did when they were first released.
The newer stuff is interesting – but more Underworld than Britpop. Lots of 10 minute long records with little or no vocals, clashing chords and John Simm lookalike Tom Yorke dancing like he’s having a mild seizure, were perfectly fun, but I for one thought they sat a little uneasily with tracks from The Bends…
Make no mistake though – they look good, sound good, and have a great back catalogue, but the sooner Radiohead ditch the dance act and get back to pulling out the riffs that made the famous in the first place, the better.
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