Radiohead open Manchester's cricket-ground show with “Let Down”

Radiohead opened their show at Emirates Old Trafford, Lancashire County Cricket Club's ground in Manchester, on Tuesday 4 July with “Let Down”, the first time the song had ever started a Radiohead set. “Daydreaming”, which had opened every one of the band's 23 shows of 2017, moved to the top of the first encore.

The show took the place of the band's two Manchester Arena nights, and ticket holders for both came to the cricket ground. Thom Yorke made no direct reference from the stage to the Manchester Arena bombing of 22 May.

The set ran to 26 songs, the longest of the year so far, and it leaned on OK Computer, whose anniversary reissue OKNOTOK had come out eleven days before: six of its songs plus “I Promise”, against three from A Moon Shaped Pool. “I Promise”, the 1996 song first issued on the reissue, came in the second encore, its third outing of the year, after Oslo and Dublin in June. The title track of The Bends followed it, only its second performance of the tour after Mexico City last October. Before “The Bends” Yorke told the crowd to please sing along, because I'll probably forget the first verse⁵.

As at Glastonbury on 23 June, the crowd took up the “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” chant to the tune of “Seven Nation Army”, this time after “No Surprises”, and nobody on stage had asked for it. During “You and Whose Army?” a camera trained on one of Yorke's eyes as he sat at the piano filled the screens with it.

Reviewers said the sound was a struggle. For the first half hour it came and went on the wind, at times people shouted for it to be turned up, and the synthesiser in “Idioteque” barely carried. The show ran past two hours, and after the band left the stage the crowd kept on with the last refrain of “Karma Police”. Louder Than War has a full review with photographs.

Setlist, 4 July 2017