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Rating: Writing something critical and clear-minded about this event requires setting aside emotions, sensationalism, personal interpretations, and triumphalism. It's undeniable that we are facing a very high-level concert: over two hours of show, 25 songs, extremely high quality of performances, almost obsessive attention to detail. But with Radiohead, it is normal and right to have huge expectations, so here are some critical insights.
A setlist that made many fans happy and which objectively speaks volumes about the quality and breadth of the repertoire. However, someone familiar with the band's habits in making setlists might protest the lack of rarities or lesser-known songs. Sure, Creep would theoretically be a rare song in live shows, but the element of surprise has now vanished. The real tour for A Moon Shaped Pool was last year's, so the selection now seems tending towards a best of. An unassailable setlist, at a level that very few bands can afford. But I expected some surprising moves: the new old single I Promise from twenty years ago, a Climbing up the Walls, who knows. Instead, I got the strong impression that the reasoning was: «We're at a festival, we rarely come to Italy, there will be a lot of superficial fans. Let's play the most well-known tracks, especially from Ok Computer and In Rainbows because those are safe bets.» And the impression is that they won't be returning to Italy any time soon. It's notoriously not one of their favorite destinations.
Obviously, this is nitpicking, but it seems right to do so. I could also protest about the lack of tracks from the latest album, but I don't feel like it. Because frankly, the live rendition doesn't match the more explicitly rock tracks without orchestrations. Daydreaming is amazing live too, but Desert Island Disk and The Numbers are not exactly among the highest points of the concert. The latter, in particular, suffers from the absence of strings. It would have made more sense to include Present Tense or True Love Waits, but you can't have everything. The last album is a production jewel and a studio work, but its live rendition is decidedly problematic. For example, Burn the Witch is, in my opinion, unpresentable without an orchestra. It's good they scratched it off.
On the contrary, Ful Stop is a bomb, like several other more electronic pieces. And here is a second flaw: why those arrangements for Idioteque and Everything in its right place? Maybe for Tommaso's current tastes, the beat of the former is too rudimentary, but it exudes the '90s and shouldn't be changed, lest the piece's potential falls far below its original capacity. It's a sacred song standing against worldly and immediate music. The latter, on the other hand, is transformed from a spectral song almost into an anthem, emphasizing rhythm and partially sacrificing the atmosphere.
The arrangements that work best are, of course, those from Ok Computer and In Rainbows. Because they are more organically rock and more reproducible. In fact, those songs live a second youth live. Pieces I know like the back of my hand have taken on a new charm, with a more spacious and three-dimensional structure. Airbag is formidable, as are Paranoid Android, Arpeggi, Reckoner. As already highlighted on the web, the two albums are truly siblings and boast equally magnificent arrangements.
There seems to be a programmatic line of making a racket, especially in the first part. This explains the various Myxomatosis, 15 Steps, Bodysnatchers, even Airbag, if you will. But the best Radiohead, in my opinion, aren't the noisy ones, so they could have focused entirely on the slow songs. Evidently, the intention is to present a lively, rock, and electronic festival image. That's fine; it's a choice.
But when they unleash the many gem ballads from their discography, you realize they are masters at it. Thom is a maestro, and the others support him as they should. All I Need, Pyramid Song, Exit Music, No Surprises, Fake Plastic Trees, Nude: this is the musical essence of Radiohead, what makes them great. Incredible melodies, period. The perfection is such that music and lyrics seem sculpted, so defined, so iconically. A communicative flow from Thom to each of the 50,000 present. A magic.
The live setting does justice, revealing which are truly the greatest things done by the band. And you realize that some tracks work on the record mainly for their studio construction, but live they fall apart: Lotus Flower and Bloom can't keep up with the others because they are cerebral, alien songs, synthesized in a laboratory. Others aren't; they are immediate and perfect, the golden ratio of rock. In front of all those people, you can't afford to let anything go; you can't play too complicated. The powerful and direct things get through, the others don't.
This concert, apart from the personal joy of hearing them after 14 years of following them, made me understand once again the greatness of the band's classics and the limitations of other productions (everything is always very relative), which may be more original on record but have less inherent vitality. Paranoid Android, a song I haven't listened to for ages, seemed new to me because I saw six people enjoying playing it, reveling in its skillful construction. But without losing their essence, without having to follow a too narrow script conceived in the studio and then imitated live. No, that song expresses itself live in its most complete form. The same goes for several others, but not all.
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