Ed O'Brien plays his first show as EOB, at Toronto's Great Hall

Ed O'Brien played his first concert under his own name, as EOB, at the Great Hall in Toronto on Friday 7 February, to a crowd of under a thousand. NOW Magazine has the review. Two songs in, he owned up. I'm not going to lie, I've been nervous about this since Christmas.¹ Later he joked that his whole crew was about a quarter of the size of Radiohead's lighting crew.

He played for about an hour and a quarter with his band, Hinako Omori, Ross Chapman, Dishan Abrahams and Alvin Ford Jr. Eight of the nine songs on Earth, the album announced yesterday for 17 April, were in the set, all but “Cloak of the Night”, and six of them had never been heard anywhere. With only an album's worth of songs, several ran into long jams, which O'Brien joked were inspired by Phish. He covered Layo & Bushwacka! and Ulrich Schnauss, and ended the encore with Labi Siffre's “I Got The...”, the record Eminem sampled for “My Name Is”, with room for a drum solo.

It was the first of four small shows ahead of the album, all sold out, with Chicago tomorrow and New York and Los Angeles next week. Afterwards he stayed to shake hands and sign records.

From the stage he said he had never felt the need to make a solo record, because he had given himself to being a father and Radiohead fulfilled him. What changed his mind was a sense that he should help bring people together in divided times. The most important thing at the moment is for us to be kind to each other.¹