Radiohead play Milan's Arena Civica as Italy beat France

Radiohead played the first of two nights at Milan's Arena Civica on 17 June while Italy were playing France at Euro 2008. When “Climbing Up the Walls” opened in a burst of static, Thom Yorke joked that Jonny Greenwood was trying to find the football, and the stadium erupted when Ed O'Brien announced from the stage that Italy had won 2-0.

The Arena Civica is a 200-year-old stadium in the middle of the city, once Inter's home ground, and it held 18,000 in light rain. Craig McLean reviewed the night for Q and gave it four stars. He found a gentler show than on earlier tours, with fewer crunching guitars and fewer crowd-pleasers. For “Bangers + Mash” Yorke sat at a drum kit. His high points were “Myxomatosis”, “Optimistic” and a black-and-white “My Iron Lung”, at the end of which Yorke shouted “Andiamo!”, one of the few things he said all night.

The tour has been planned to cut its carbon footprint, in step with Yorke's work for Friends of the Earth's Big Ask campaign. The band play city-centre venues near public transport, keep a separate PA in America so it never has to be flown over, and carry £200,000 of batteries that store energy. O'Brien told McLean that the new LED lighting rig uses between a fifth and a tenth of the power of the old lights.

The review also notes that the band had turned down a Reading headline slot and chosen not to play Glastonbury, had played “No Surprises” once on the tour and “Creep” not at all. The In Rainbows songs, O'Brien said, need a groove that the older, tenser material never did, and the band are more relaxed and playing better for it.

Setlist, Arena Civica, Milan, 17 June 2008

The list Q printed has “Morning Bell” in it; the grid gives what was played, from the archive's setlist.