Radiohead headline Roskilde, their first time back since 1997

Radiohead headlined the Orange Stage at Roskilde Festival on Thursday 3 July, their first time at the festival since a set in pouring rain in 1997 (they first played it in 1994), and left a crowd of just over 60,000 singing “Karma Police”. The song had finished and the band had come to the front of the stage to take the applause when Thom Yorke picked up an acoustic guitar again and played its closing chords, so the whole field could sing the last line with him once more.

It was also their first Danish show since In Rainbows came out, though Copenhagen had heard several of its songs two years early, when the band tried them out at KB Hallen in May 2006.

The main set ran about an hour and three-quarters before the first of two encores, which began with “Videotape”. Christian Boier, reviewing for Soundvenue, singled out the jump halfway through from the dense “The National Anthem” straight into the acoustic “Faust Arp”. Yorke hardly spoke, and Boier counted 20 minutes before he offered so much as a “Hey”. The stage had six large screens and low-energy LED lighting, and the band were off shortly before midnight.

Five stars out of six came from Jyllands-Posten, Berlingske Tidende, Ekstra Bladet, Soundvenue and GAFFA, and four from Politiken. Kasper Schütt-Jensen wrote in Jyllands-Posten that within a few songs the band had shown they could send their fans into ecstasy without a single catchy chorus, with nothing more than a lopsided piano figure and Yorke's nasal voice. Erik Jensen, behind Politiken's four, thought no rock band played better, but that this one seemed to play mostly for itself and never quite reached past the edge of a stage as demanding as the Orange Stage.

Setlist, Orange Stage, Roskilde, 3 July 2008