Radiohead return to Portland after 21 years and close on “Creep”

Radiohead played their first Portland show in 21 years at a sold-out Moda Center on Sunday 9 April, and ended it with “Creep”, the first time they had played it this year. Before “Everything in Its Right Place”, Thom Yorke answered the question of where they had been all that time. What do you want? We were busy¹, he said, while Ed O'Brien counted the years out on his fingers to the front rows. The Daily Emerald has the full review.

The last visit was to La Luna, a club in south-east Portland, on 25 March 1996, the third of three shows there. That set had “Lucky” and “Electioneering”, neither yet on a Radiohead album. La Luna has since closed, and the building is a ramen restaurant.

The 24-song set ran to about two and a half hours and took six songs from A Moon Shaped Pool. It opened with “Daydreaming”, for which the band asked the floor to keep still, and it did. Jonny Greenwood played the ondes Martenot, the early electronic keyboard, on “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” and “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”, pressing its keys with the headstock of his guitar.

“Glass Eyes” opened the first encore, its first performance in North America and only its third anywhere, after London and Lyon last year. Before it the crowd had filled the dark arena with phone torches, and Yorke came back out with That's what fans are for¹.

Setlist, Portland, 9 April 2017