I had always wanted to see Islands live after hearing their brilliant 2006 debut “Return to Sea.” They seemed exciting and powerful on record, and I imagined an amazing show. After seeing them perform, I can say that at least the music was. Each member is highly skilled, and I was especially enamored by the two Asian dudes on strings and percussions, emphatic in their movements and always cheerful. This cannot be said for their downer of a front man Nicholas Thorburn. He is a great and enthusiastic musician, but as soon as he puts his mouth to the mic to do anything besides sing, he sucks any joy out of the room. Statements like “You all will like this song, but I don’t,” when introducing one of the only fan favorites to be played, “Don’t call me Whitney, Bobby”, are discouraging to say the least. All of the songs, however, were impeccably performed. Most notably, “The Arm” off of their new album “In Arm’s Way,” released only two days before the show, a subject which the gloomy Thorburn thought he would comment on, saying something to the effect of “It was a hard process and we couldn’t be happy about it.” I initially believed he had said, “we couldn’t be happier about it,” but my friend thought he heard different, and to be honest it wouldn’t surprise me. Walking out onto the stage with a ghostly white painted face, Thorburn holds a unique stage presence. If not for being such a downer, I would have no complaints. The energy was there. They were spot on. Even though they only performed three songs from “Return to Sea,” the show was great. The complexly orchestrated songs come to even more life than on record and seeing them perform allows you to see the intricacies of each one, down to the dropping of chains into a microphone for even more effect.
Coming out for a one song encore, a beautiful rendition of my personal favorite “Swans (Life After Death)” I was content. The Setlist was a bit short, but what few songs they did play were very powerful and it was an overall great live showgoing experience.
Let me start of by saying that Radiohead at Nissan Pavillion was the best concert I have ever seen, topping even Tool’s legendary bonnaroo performance last year, as well as the two Arcade Fire concerts I have seen. This being said, Radiohead at Nissan Pavilion had potential to be the worst experience of my life.
It was sometime in March when the band made the announcement of the tour. I was more than excited to see a show in my area. The band soon announced that there would be a presale for the concert from the band’s website, the general sale would be that Saturday. Of course, being a huge fan, I was not going to take any chances with getting tickets. There was one problem with the presale, a time was not given as to when the presale would begin. Great idea Radiohead! leave it to the fans to guess when the sale would start. The morning of the presale was one filled with being awoken by my alarm clock 10 to every hour from 5AM to 8AM to look over the edge of my bunk bed at the presale screen that I had set to to autorefresh ever 2 seconds, while my two college roommates lay asleep begrudgingly awoken every time I was. As I checked the screen at 750AM I leaped off my bed and bought 4 tickets to the show. I had just gotten presumably amazing tickets (the exact tickets would not be told to me until a month later) to see my favorite band perform. The hardest part of the concert experience was over and I was happier than a lottery winner on anti-depressants, or so I thought.
Two months passed, and the concert day finally arrived. I was more than excited. Here are some stats for the concert:
Location: Nissan Pavilion
Show Start Time: 730 PM
Distance to Venue from home: 38.2 Miles
Departure time: 5:40 PM
Arrival time: 7:15 PM
Seats: Section 101 Row L
Weather: Steadily Pouring, Approximately 55 degrees Fahrenheit.
We stepped out of the car into a pool of water and made the 10 minute trek to the gates where we saw that no video screens would be used at the artists request. Things were not looking good so far. Not only was I improperly dressed for the occasion, wearing only a tshirt and a hoodie made obsolete by the swim of a walk to the covered seats we were fortunate enough to have, but I had brought my father along, a fellow music enthusiast, in hopes of turning him on to my favorite band. Not exactly the best circumstances for this endeavor. Shivering in my seat, I glanced behind me at the large crowd of drenched fans on the lawn. With so many umbrellas obstructing an already horrible view of the stage (the lawn is very far and the side screens were not going to be in use) and being poured on for the shows entirety, I didn’t know if it would be worth it for them to stay. I had to ask myself if I would have stayed in those conditions, a terribly difficult question, making me even more grateful for my own seats. It was just awful. I couldn’t believe my own lack of enthusiasm.
The opening band, Liars, put on a good show, playing songs from their wonderful “Drums not Dead” album as well as others, but let’s face it, I was cold and was there for the radioheads. As Liars left the stage the excitement built. As the stage setup began, I knew that this show had great potential. This tour’s stage setup alone is something to marvel at. These long tube shaped lights hang from the rafters like icicles, in essence transforming the stage into some mystical setting. The capabilities of these things is out of this world. Not only can they become any color, or all at once, but they can interact with each other creating shapes and pictures. Behind all of this is a wide screen that shows close ups of the individual band members from strange angles in various colors, layered on top of one another. Where the cameras were, I had now idea, making it even more amazing.
As the band walked out, the excitement began and the collective feeling of the crowd was that the weather didn’t even matter. After the wonderful opener “All I Need,” Mr. Yorke was quick to comment about the conditions: “Hello wet people! We are having trouble with the wet” Later he would say things to the effect of “After the show, make friends with the person next to you, find out where they live, go home, and turn the heat up.” The band would later announce that many people couldn’t make it to the show because of the weather and flooding. I had to imagine how horrible that would be and read blogs from some of those unfortunate fans once I arrived home.
Radiohead definitely made up for the situation by playing one of the best setlists ever. Besides playing all of “In Rainbows” we heard the tour’s first and only “Karma Police” as well as the second “Paranoid Android” of the tour. Also, the tour’s first “Jigsaw Falling into Place” was a highlight. When Yorke and folk finished the first encore with a rainbow studded “Planet Telex,” I thought nothing would top it, but as the band returned and started off the second encore with the best performance of “Fake Plastic Trees” imaginable, I knew this was a concert I would never forget. As they left the stage for the last time, the communal feeling in the crowd was satisfaction. A good band can make you forget about anything else, all your present and past problems, and Radiohead did that for us. What’s more, my dad enjoyed the concert despite everything else. The drive home took 2 hours. It did not stop pouring.
Setlist:
All I Need
Jigsaw Falling Into Place
Lucky
15 Step
Nude
Pyramid Song
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Myxomatosis
Idioteque
Faust Arp
Videotape
Paranoid Android
Just
Reckoner
Everything In Its Right Place
Bangers + Mash
Bodysnatchers
Encore 1:
Like Spinning Plates
Optimistic
Karma Police
Go Slowly
Planet Telex
Encore 2:
Fake Plastic Trees
The National Anthem
House of Cards
Late into the evening last Sunday night, Radiohead Guitarist Jonny Greenwood posted this statement on the band’s site:
Hello everyone.
Well, the new album is finished, and it’s coming out in 10 days;
We’ve called it In Rainbows.
Love from us all.
Jonny
Radiohead fans around the world had been waiting for the band’s alleged seventh LP for almost five years since the release of 2003’s Hail to the Thief. In the eager minds of some fans, it was becoming the next Smile*. Aside from the fact that the band had played many of their new songs throughout their last tour, the band had been teasing and toying with its fans for weeks, posting encrypted messages on their website, making statements that the album was finished but that they didn’t know what to do with it, and even stating that the album would not be released until 2008. Thus, it proved difficult for fans to comprehend the meaning behind Greenwood’s unexpected statement of simple rhetoric “ . . . it’s coming out in 10 days.”
Later, fans attempting to reach the Radiohead website, www.radiohead.com, would be automatically redirected to a simple site with the URL www.inrainbows.com. The site’s homepage displaying the words “Radiohead In Rainbows In Rainbows In Rainbows Enter” backed by a distorted spectrum of colors would be the portal for purchase of the new album. One click and the real news came. Not only was the band releasing the album, but they were allowing users to choose the price for which they could pay (0.00 being an option). In essence, they leaked their album on their own, before it could be illegally leaked, and allowed customers to make a donation.
What can be made of this? Well, Greenwood claims:
It was kind of an experiment as well; we were just doing it for ourselves and that was all. People are making a big thing about it being against the industry or trying to change things for people but it’s really not what motivated us to do it. It’s more about feeling like it was right for us and feeling bored of what we were doing before . . . It’s just interesting to make people pause for even a few seconds and think about what music is worth now. I thought it was an interesting thing to ask people to do and compare it to whatever else in their lives they value or don’t value.
What’s more, artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Jamiroquai, and others are contemplating following suit.
Now, for the best part: behind all the hype and media coverage that this unique release has acquired, the album is actually GOOD. In fact, it’s better than good—it is shaping up to be one of their best efforts to date. In Rainbows is neither a reversion nor a strong leap forward. It is a career-spanning album. It shows a band no longer restricting itself with its own creativity and ambition, no longer forcing itself into a corner. This is not to say that these restrictions were not necessary in making their previous works of genius, but really, where else could Radiohead go that they haven’t already? With Rainbows, they have managed to fine-tune the strange electronic- fueled sounds of Amnesiac and Kid A, the basic pop qualities of The Bends, and the futuristic, space-age sounds of OK Computer to make an album that is masterful in its simplicity.
The album begins with the bangs and clanks of the electronic drums of “15 Step,” with Yorke’s famous falsetto vocals going through melodies he’s never touched before, backed by the perfect placement of children screaming with joy. It is analogous to Kid A’s “Idioteque.” Then the band takes us to the guitar-based “Bodysnatchers,” a small departure from the almost solely synth and electronic based sounds they had worked with on their past two albums.
Then the songs mellow down for the most part. “Nude,” a track that has been carried over all the way back from the OK Computer sessions ten years ago, creates a euphoric ambiance with Yorke singing a lullaby of a melody into the microphone as if he is trying to calm it to sleep. The streak of ambient tracks continues with “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi,” “All I Need,” “Reckoner,” and “House of Cards” each of which builds up to a breathtaking climax (“Faust Arp” being the only track lacking this culmination).
“Jigsaw Falling into Place,” comes together as one of the best tracks on the album, and as Yorke sings, “The beat goes round and round,” with increasing passion, the song continues and everything truly does fall right into place.
The album ends with the simple piano chord based ballad “Videotape,” one of the band’s most minimal tracks to date. The beauty is in this lack of complexity and layering, something the band is most known for. It is a near perfect ending to a near perfect album. And as Yorke sings, for most eager fans October tenth was “ . . . the most perfect day . . . [they] . . . have ever seen.”
*Brian Wilson of the beach boys took 40 years to complete this legend of an album.
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