Radiohead headline Coachella, with a few lines of Neil Young in the encore

Radiohead headlined the Saturday of Coachella's first weekend at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, on 14 April, and near the end of the first encore Thom Yorke sang a few lines of Neil Young's “After the Gold Rush” unaccompanied, as the way into “Everything in Its Right Place”. It was the first time the Young song had turned up on the tour. Chase McMullen of Beats Per Minute picks out that brief passage as a highlight of the set.

The festival streamed all three days live on YouTube, and Radiohead, missing from the published stream schedule, were added at the last minute. They are back to headline the second Saturday on 21 April, as announced in January: for the first time, the festival runs the same line-up on two weekends in a row. The last time Radiohead topped the bill there was in 2004.

The set ran about two hours, with two encores. “Identikit”, still unreleased, was in it; the band first played it on the tour's first night in Miami. “Lucky” opened the first encore, but there was very little else from the first three albums and nothing at all from The Bends.

The opening “Bloom” was built on the interlocking rhythms of Phil Selway and the second drummer, Clive Deamer. About two dozen large LED screens hung over the stage and moved between songs. For “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” they rippled blue-green like water, and for “Staircase” they tilted into a diagonal and lit up one after another like steps.

It was a bitterly cold night, the crowd wrapped in blankets and sweatshirts, and the field sang along to “Karma Police”.

Setlist, Coachella, Indio, 14 April 2012