Radiohead change eight songs between two Sydney nights

Radiohead's second night at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, on Saturday 24 April, kept only 15 of the Friday's 23 songs. It opened with “2 + 2 = 5”, moved “There There”, the Friday's opener, to the end of the main set and brought in “Lucky” and “We Suck Young Blood”. The Bumblebeez, named in March as support for the Australian dates, opened.

For Bernard Zuel of The Sydney Morning Herald the rebuilt Saturday was the more emotional night and took him back to the 1998 shows, where the Friday had turned on rhythm. He calls the two nights different and ranks neither.

His review of the Friday argues that leaving guitars behind after OK Computer changed only the surface. On stage rhythm now drives everything, from the drum loop of “The National Anthem” to Jonny Greenwood's drum sample in “Idioteque”, with Thom Yorke dancing to it in jigs and spins. In “You and Whose Army?” Yorke crouched at the piano with the camera close on his face and turned his voice into something like Wormtongue from The Lord of the Rings.

Zuel's verdict is that Noel Gallagher owes Colin Greenwood an apology. He recalls Gallagher's old digs at Radiohead, that they were music to mope to and that nobody ever bought a record for its bass part. Colin lacks the mad-scientist air of Jonny, who works from a corner of old gear that looks taped together, and has neither Ed O'Brien's looks nor Yorke's intensity. He stands half turned away at the back beside Phil Selway, and he is the pivot the band turn on live.

Setlists, Sydney Entertainment Centre