Thom Yorke calls “Creep” a pretty good song in Bridlington

Thom Yorke introduced “Creep” as a pretty good song¹ in the middle of Radiohead's set at the Spa Pavilion in Bridlington on 4 September, then sang it gently and with control. Stephen Dalton, reviewing the night for NME, takes it as the band coming to terms with the song, neither disowning it nor making too much of it.

“Exit Music (For a Film)” closed the main set, Yorke alone on acoustic guitar at the start, and the last encore was “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”, its harmonies overlapping. The punk-metal middle of “Paranoid Android” gets fiercer every night, Dalton says. Jonny Greenwood went at his guitar in “Bones”. “Fake Plastic Trees” and “Karma Police” set the hall swaying, and “My Iron Lung” and “The Bends” had it pogoing.

He is less sure about the whole. To him the show is half slick professionalism and half risk, short of some spark, and he wonders whether success has blunted them. “Planet Telex” struck him as clumsy and “Subterranean Homesick Alien” as muted, and the few B-sides and Pablo Honey songs left much of the room cold. The crowd now takes in old Blur followers, he notes. The staging was spare, the five in red and purple fog in front of steel towers, and Dalton sees a band getting ready for arenas.