Radiohead make triumphant return to London

On the first London stop for their ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ tour, Radiohead mix the old and new in spectacular style.

The set begins with five songs from their latest, ninth album. Live, the string-led ‘Burn the Witch’ is flipped into a tense, bass-heavy opener. ‘Daydreaming’, sombre enough on record, is beautifully subdued - you can hear a pin drop within the 3,000 capacity crowd.

It’s a night marred only by the hordes of fans who’ve failed to get a ticket. Standing outside the venue with cardboard signs, they’re mostly prompted by touts selling at highly inflated prices. Glossy adverts for secondary ticketing sites, placed around Camden, make for a surreal, twisted irony atmosphere outside Roundhouse. And the venue’s strict door policy - original ticket-purchasers had to show ID - also means that some who’d forked out for a touted ticket can’t get in.

When these tickets initially sold out in record time - only to reappear online priced in the thousands - Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke tweeted about being “as fucked off as you are.” But he’s in fine spirits tonight. During ‘Nude’, Jonny Greenwood’s various space machinery gadgets - purchased from a Pluto repair shop, presumably - malfunction. Instead of sweet, brooding atmospherics, out comes a bizarre noise not unlike someone stamping on a harmonica. Yorke forces the group to start again, but all in good humour. And when the otherwise peerless Greenwood makes another error during ‘You and Whose Army?’, Yorke giggles and carries on playing.

“We’re staying the night, so we’re going to play everything,” Yorke jokes before a first encore. By this point, the set’s peaked with a one-two of ‘Idioteque’ and ‘Reckoner’, backed by a surprisingly jolting ‘Myxomatosis’. The night’s best moments arrive when somewhat-forgotten songs are given a new lease of life, like the breakneck percussion of ‘Morning Mr. Magpie’ and the game-changing ‘Exit Music (For a Film)’.

With the exception of ‘Pablo Honey’, they draw on every album from their career, and there’s a remarkable sense that even the oldest of songs are still in development, re-jigged slightly to catch up with the present day. It’s something they’ve been doing for years on record, giving previously discarded efforts like ‘Nude’ and ‘True Love Waits’ time in the spotlight when they looked dead and buried. But they’ve rarely been given credit for performing the same feat live, dragging oldies by their ankles and performing miraculous resuscitation.

Watch highlights from the show below.