Photos: Radiohead delivers masterful, career-spanning set in New Orleans

Few bands have mastered the art of reinvention quite like Radiohead. Over the course of nine albums, the English alternative rock giants have both exemplified and transcended the genre, creating a perfect storm of sonic diversity and popularity that may only be surpassed by The Beatles.

Photo by Marc Pagani.

This chameleonic quality has made for some excellent concerts over the years, and it was on full display last night when Radiohead returned to New Orleans for the first time since 2003. With three encores and a generous two-hour-and-twenty-minute runtime, the show featured a career-spanning setlist that drew from eight of the group’s nine LPs (only 1993’s Pablo Honey—best known for spawning the hit single “Creep”—was absent). The vast majority of this material was executed to near-perfection by the band’s five members, who were augmented by an extra percussionist and a brilliant light show that captured the disparate moods constructed by each song.

As was the case with the tour’s first two stops, last night’s performance opened with a trio of selections from Radiohead’s 2016 album A Moon Shaped Pool—”Daydreaming,” “Desert Island Disk” and “Ful Stop.” Each of these tracks seemed to draw from a completely different aural palette, and each required frontman Thom Yorke to pick up a different instrument, a trend that continued more or less throughout the show.

Yet Yorke’s most important instrument is always his voice, an ethereal layer that wrings as much emotion from the notes it hits as it does from the often-muddled words being sung. For Radiohead, lyrics are rarely as important as textures, and Yorke’s airy pipes are usually used to that end. Nevertheless, there are a few tunes in which Yorke rises above the fray to become something more than another layer in the whole, and those offered some of last night’s most memorable moments. Whether it was the lingering falsetto of “Nude,” the beautiful melancholy of a rare “How to Disappear Completely” or the hazy, reverb-laden sounds of “You and Whose Army?,” every song provided further proof that the singer’s voice is aging gracefully as he approaches 50.

Unsurprisingly, the rest of the band was in top form as well, with multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood, guitarist Ed O’Brien, bassist Colin Greenwood and drummer Phil Selway effortlessly maintaining the extremely high level of professionalism that Radiohead’s attention to detail requires. The group was also joined by auxiliary percussionist Clive Deamer, who was first added to the equation in 2012 to help bring the band’s rhythmically-complex King of Limbs album to life on stage. His extra kit was particularly handy when tracks from that record, such as “Bloom” or “Separator,” made an appearance, allowing the band to flesh out those tunes without watering them down or bringing on a drum machine. Conversely, the A Moon Shaped Pool number “Burn The Witch” suffered a bit due to the lack of auxiliary players, who could have better realized the song’s pulsating string arrangements (the live version filled in the holes just fine with a guitar, but the difference was noticeable).

Minor issues with “Burn the Witch” aside, Radiohead treated the sold out crowd to a dazzling encore—or more accurately, encores—that were heavily-weighted toward old favorites. Three classics from the band’s 1997 masterpiece Ok Computer had their due during the eight-song run, including a blissful “No Surprises” and a gorgeous, singalong-inducing “Karma Police” that got an extra refrain when Yorke remained on stage, acoustic guitar in hand, after the rest of the group had left.

The band returned, of course, and the whole thing could have ended on a high note with the awe-inspiring “Fake Plastic Trees” trees that punctuated that second encore, but Radiohead wasn’t finished with us yet. In a somewhat unusual move, the five-piece-plus-one returned for a third encore, ripping through a show-stopping rendition of “Paranoid Android” that took the very concept of lagniappe to new heights. It was a fantastic way to end what will likely be Radiohead’s last New Orleans show for sometime, though I like to think “I Might Be Wrong” about that.

UPDATE: Looks like a few members of Radiohead went out to the Maple Leaf to see George Porter Jr.’s trio after their show at the Smoothie King Center.