Melody Maker calls Radiohead's half-hour at ULU perfect

Peter Paphides reviews Radiohead's show at ULU, the University of London Union, in this week's Melody Maker, and calls the half-hour set they played there on Thursday 14 January perfect. He last saw the band three months ago, and he now puts the fuss around them beside the Stone Roses' a few years back and Suede's last year, summing it up in a word the paper prints in asterisks.

In the same issue Dave Jennings makes “Anyone Can Play Guitar” his Single of the Week. He hears it as a song about rock stardom and takes it as proof that “Creep” was no fluke. The other two tracks, “Faithless, the Wonder Boy” and “Coke Babies”, please him too, and he is counting the weeks to the album. The single is out on 1 February, with Pablo Honey following on the 22nd, and the tour opens in Canterbury on Tuesday.

Thom Yorke, bleached hair longer than it was in the autumn, announced “Ripcord”, and “Creep” came next, with Paphides picking out the chord Jonny Greenwood holds through the chorus. After a couple of encores, the song that finished it for him was “Prove Yourself”, Yorke straining over his own guitar.