Live Review
Atoms For Peace, The Roundhouse, London
There’s a sense that nobody else could pull it off.
current world tour is all about a newly-founded band who in surreal circumstances combined their knowhow to record a debut album, but there’s a different aspect that’s at play here. The very foundations of this project rest on the group’s gig beginnings, where Thom Yorke recruited a surprising list of musicians on paper, to help bring his ‘The Eraser’ solo record to life. And though it’s rarely regarded as an essential of Yorke’s career, at a Roundhouse that’s fit to burst it emerges as a fuller, more significant force.
‘AMOK’ and ‘The Eraser’ don’t necessarily match-up as compatible albums like one might have you believe. But the purpose of this show is to bring them under one wing, project them as a singular, frenzied voice. Virtually every song performed tonight verges on overbearing. Inordinate levels of percussion are thrown in. Two drummers, Nigel Godrich’s samplers, Yorke’s improvised beatbox, too. It’s enough to leave the senses spinning on their side. And despite this there’s a sense that nobody else could pull it off.
As it plays out, the most cacophonous, in-your face moments are the finest. ‘Unless’ is a dark, immersive beast on record. But live it soundtracks a sinister communion. ‘Rabbit In Your Headlights’ - a track from way back, recorded with UNKLE in 1998 - is a sleepier piece, albeit similarly capable of upping the half-grizzly, half-celebratory atmosphere.
It’s in ‘The Eraser’’s highlights however that this show really comes to life. By the time the band depart with ‘Black Swan’ projected in all its head-spinning lunacy, two encores doesn’t feel like enough. These rhythmic, energised takes are so constant they could continue on for hours. ‘Cymbal Rush’, which closes the first half, is arguably the set’s most melodic turn, but for ‘Ingenue’’s stripped-back piano hush. The former is a combination of all Atoms For Peace’s vital aspects - beauty and maddening rapture combining in four flooring minutes.
It’s hard to take your eyes off the performers, too. Flea ditches his Red Hot rep and arrives caped, ready for action. By the end he’s as vest-addled and pumped-up as the rest of them. If anything he’s the biggest crowdpleaser on stage, and minus a three-quarter-short sporting Anthony Kiedis he’s actually quite charming. Yorke is at his Dad-dancing best, embracing the role of frontman perhaps more so than his Radiohead days. To say he’s enjoying himself would be to label the group’s songs as ‘non-minimal.’
These supposedly one-off shows might be a swansong for the project, but it doesn’t feel like that’s the case. They thrive in this environment, turning the Roundhouse into an arms-in-the-air scene of near-euphoria. Clearly still getting a taste for their new guise, it’s difficult to imagine Yorke and co. cutting things short and waving goodbye so soon to something this thrilling.
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