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At the risk of losing my credibility as a music writer, I'll admit that I hadn't seen Radiohead play live before last Friday, when the band headlined the opening night of the inaugural All Points West Festival on Liberty Island in New Jersey. In the days leading up to the show, when I told my music-loving friends that I was going to see Radiohead for the first time they reacted as if I'd told them I'd never eaten ice cream or gone swimming--how could I have missed out on something so fundamentally awesome? No good reason, really. But, after the show, I understood the incredulity, because Radiohead live are amazing. 

Like anyone who digs guitars, melodies, and cool whooshing noises, I loved Radiohead's pre-Kid A work, but, since that glitchy, experimental album came out in 2000, I'd lost some interest. Recent albums struck me as a too dour and self-consciously arty. A band I'd enjoyed for its songs turned into a band more interested in sounds. Live though, what impressed me most was the way the Oxford quintet reconciled those two sides of its musical personality. With their crashing Jonny Greenwood riffs and heard-once-remembered-forever choruses, older songs like "Optimistic," "Paranoid Android," and "Just" were expectedly awesome, and reminders of why Radiohead seemed destined to follow U2 as the world's biggest and best purveyors of moody, rafter-rattling guitar rock. The biggest surprise for me was how well the band's mysterious and unorthodox post-millenial material worked in a huge festival setting. With their eerie keyboards and unpredictable rhythms--aided of course by Thom Yorke's ghostly vocals--songs like "Idioteque" and, especially, "Pyramid Song" transformed a barren plot of grass into a magical, almost sacred space. You just don't hear sounds like the ones Radiohead creates very often. Thom Yorke's broken-hearted angel singing (and weirdly compelling twitchy stage presence), Jonny Greenwood's otherwordly guitar sorcery, the rhythm section's mutant funk: it adds up to something for which only invented categories seem to apply. Martian mood music? Distopic arena rock? Cheesy as it sounds, there were times during the show I wanted to close my eyes, so I could better concentrate on the pleasurably disorienting feeling of hearing something unfamiliar. It's a rare occurrence.

It's easy to be cynical when people rave about a band or an album. Lord knows there are plenty of times when I just smile, nod, and think about something else when someone tells me about the insanely great music they've just heard. But--scout's honor--I'm being serious when I say that Radiohead's live show both justifies and exceeds the hype. Check ‘em out.

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