Radiohead open the tour in Miami with “Identikit” and “Cut a Hole”

Radiohead opened The King of Limbs world tour in front of a full house at the American Airlines Arena in Miami on Monday 27 February, with two new songs played for the first time, “Identikit” in the main set and “Cut a Hole” in the first encore. The band had not played Miami since the Miami Arena on 8 September 1995, on The Bends tour.

Clive Deamer, Portishead's drummer, joins Phil Selway on this tour as a second drummer, which makes six on stage, and a dozen screens move above them. John Hood, reviewing the night for The Guardian, was struck by how still the band stood, Thom Yorke apart. Other Lives supported.

Yorke introduced “Identikit” by name. It starts on a nervy drum pattern under two sleepy vocal lines, his and Ed O'Brien's, and after a minute of harmonies laid over each other and scattered percussion it turns into a dark electronic rock song.

“Cut a Hole” is slow, built on gloomy acoustic strumming, with high wordless notes from Yorke and a finish of crashing cymbals. The strumming is close enough to “Karma Police” that Spin wondered whether some of the cheering was people mistaking it for the older song. Deamer moved to the piano for it, and Yorke sang from a lyric sheet. Fan videos of both new songs were online by the next morning.

“Meeting in the Aisle” was played for the first time too. The instrumental, a 1997 B-side that is also on the 1998 EP Airbag / How Am I Driving?, was the tape the band walked on stage to from November 1997 and at most of their 1998 shows in Japan and North America. In Miami it came sixth in the main set, played by the band themselves.

Nothing in the 24 songs came from Pablo Honey or The Bends, and the night ended on “Karma Police”, with the crowd singing it.

Setlist