Radiohead give “All I Need” its first hearing in Chicago

Radiohead played a new song, “All I Need”, for the first time on Tuesday 20 June, the second of their two nights at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. NME reported Thom Yorke at the piano and Jonny Greenwood on bells.

It was one of seven unreleased songs that night, in a set that opened with “Airbag”, which had not started a Radiohead show since 1998. In “The National Anthem”, NME's setlist noted, Yorke sang notes that shadowed Greenwood's line on the ondes Martenot, the early electronic instrument he plays in that song.

The sold-out first night, on Monday 19 June, had nine unreleased songs. Curt Baran, reviewing it for the Illinois Entertainer, rates “Down Is the New Up” the most finished of them, with two drummers playing at once, Greenwood hammering at his strings and Yorke singing at full strength. To him the new songs point back towards guitars and plainer songwriting, and they could change a great deal before they are recorded.

On “4 Minute Warning”, Baran writes, the band crowded round the upright piano Yorke was playing, like a group in a rehearsal room.

Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, 19 and 20 June 2006 (* unreleased)

The nights are on the show pages for 19 June and 20 June.