Thom Yorke opens his solo tour with a new song in Christchurch

Thom Yorke opened his Everything solo tour at Wolfbrook Arena in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Wednesday 23 October, and played a song nobody had heard. “Back in the Game” is heavily electronic, a pounding beat and synthesisers under his voice. Louder reports that Yorke introduced it as written with the electronic producer Mark Pritchard, his partner on the 2016 single “Beautiful People”, and that the two have an album's worth of songs together.

“Hearing Damage”, his song for the 2009 Twilight: New Moon soundtrack, was played live for the first time, and Spin counts “Volk”, from his Suspiria score, as a live debut too. “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box” came back for the first time since Radiohead last played it in 2012, and it was the first time Yorke had played it without the band.

Two days before the tour began, talking to Double J, Yorke had brushed off talk of a Radiohead reunion. The tour has grown to 18 nights since it was announced in June, with a second Auckland night and two more in the Tokyo area.

Nobody else was on stage. Yorke worked inside a ring of drum machines, keyboards and synthesisers, each with its own microphone, moving from one to the next, and picked up acoustic and electric guitars for some songs. He played bass on “Black Swan” and sat down for “Suspirium”, while live images of him in neon outline broke up and re-formed behind him. He sang UNKLE's “Rabbit in Your Headlights”, which he had sung on in 1998, and played one Smile song, “Bodies Laughing” from Cutouts, acoustically in the first encore. Around “Packt Like Sardines” he said good evening and thanked Christchurch for having him, and when someone shouted that they loved him, he laughed. I love you too man⁷, he called back.

Setlist, Wolfbrook Arena, Christchurch, 23 October 2024