Thom Yorke salutes R.E.M. as Radiohead play two nights at Roseland

Radiohead played two sold-out nights at the Roseland Ballroom in New York on 28 and 29 September. On the first, a week after R.E.M. announced their break-up, Thom Yorke sat at the piano and sang part of “The One I Love” on the way into “Everything In Its Right Place”, and the room went quiet for it. The band have used the song as an intro before, most recently on two of their Latin American dates in March 2009, but this time it was taken as a tribute.

The shows came in the same week as Saturday Night Live and an hour on The Colbert Report, in a room the band had played in 1993, 1996 and 2000. They were the band's first concerts since a surprise set at Glastonbury in June. Both nights took in every song from The King of Limbs but “Separator”, with the unreleased “Staircase” and “The Daily Mail”. Clive Deamer, who has played with Portishead, drummed alongside Phil Selway, their two kits at opposite ends of the stage.

To beat the touts, tickets could be collected only by the buyer, with ID, just before the show, and on the first night the queue took nearly two hours and ran at least six blocks. W.A.S.T.E., the band's mail-order shop, handed copies of The Universal Sigh, the band's free newspaper, to the people waiting. One man without a ticket held a sign saying he had come 1,376 miles. Inside, Bradley Cooper danced and Philip Seymour Hoffman watched. The Hollywood Reporter reviewed the first night.

That night Yorke introduced “Subterranean Homesick Alien” at the piano with his back to the crowd, calling it a bit older than the rest; it had not been played since Denver in August 2003. He told the crowd that seeing the “Lotus Flower” video had made him realise he had become an embarrassing dad⁵. He skipped a verse of “Reckoner”, and in the second encore forgot the words of “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”. He apologised, and the crowd cheered. Spin has its review of the night.

On the second night “Supercollider” opened the second encore, the first time the full band had played it at a concert. Yorke first sang it alone in Malahide, outside Dublin, in June 2008; it went on to his Atoms for Peace shows before the band worked it up in the studio, and it came out with “The Butcher” on a Record Store Day single in April. The same night brought back “Like Spinning Plates”, unplayed since Mexico City in March 2009, and “True Love Waits” led into “Everything In Its Right Place”.

Setlists, Roseland Ballroom, 28 and 29 September 2011