Ten unreleased songs and no “Creep” at Radiohead's Meltdown show

Thom Yorke dedicated “You And Whose Army?”, one of ten unreleased songs in the set, to Tony Blair at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Saturday 1 July. This is dedicated to Tony Blair. I'm only disappointed I never got to shake his hand.¹

Scott Walker, who curates this year's Meltdown, invited Radiohead to play it. It was the one British date of their summer tour and their first British concert since the arena dates of November 1997. They played for about two hours, 22 songs across a main set and two encores, with no “Creep” and nothing else from Pablo Honey.

By NME's account, Yorke played acoustic guitar on the opener, “Optimistic”. This is a song about amnesia.¹ That was his introduction to “Morning Bell”, which he played at the piano while Jonny Greenwood took the middle of the stage and Ed O'Brien sang the harmonies. “My Iron Lung” fell apart halfway through, and Yorke, laughing, brought it back in on his own; when the equipment played up during “Everything In Its Right Place”, he kicked the keyboards. A giant mirrorball came down from the rafters for “Egyptian Song” at the start of the first encore, and of “Knives Out” he said only, as at earlier shows on the tour, that it was about cannibalism.

The hall is all-seated, but the first 50 or so rows stood all night, with Beth Orton and Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy somewhere in the crowd. “Street Spirit” drew the biggest roar of the first half, and “Fake Plastic Trees” was one of the few songs the hall sang along to.

Garry Mulholland, reviewing the show for The Guardian, found the band technically superb and the night dull. The new songs, “Optimistic” and “In Limbo” above all, struck him as effortful experiment, and he blamed a timid, hushing audience as much as the band. He liked Yorke's singing on “No Surprises” and “Fake Plastic Trees”, and took the Blair dedication as sarcasm.

Setlist