Radiohead reviewed: stunning return for rock’s radical chiefs

Uncut attended the opening night of Radiohead’s first tour for seven years. A full report will appear in a future issue of the magazine – but in the meantime, here’s 10 things we learned from this

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1. What next for Radiohead..?

It has been 10 years since Radiohead’s last studio album A Moon Shaped Pool and seven years since they last performed together in public. With no new material to promote, the purpose behind this tour remains, at best, opaque.

What is clear is that in the intervening years since their last tour, the band members have each moved away from Radiohead – into different configurations, solo projects, film and theatre scores. Does this make it harder, then, for them to come together again? Might this be, God forbid, the opening night of a farewell tour? These ideas feed a faint sense of pathos into tonight’s show – which, as it happens, is one of the very finest Radiohead shows I’ve ever seen.

2. The merch is a clue

The busy merchandise stands outside and inside the venue provide a big giveaway about the parameters of tour setlists. A much loved OK Computer song title embossed on a t-shirt? A reprint of the King Of Limbs newspaper? Cyptic t-shirt slogans bearing the In Rainbows font? Nearly all Radioheads are covered here. Much as they are in the setlist, so it transpires…

3. The stage set is stunning

The tour is taking place in the round, with the band performing in a circular box in the centre of the auditorium. Radiohead clearly want to be among us – but strictly on their own terms. The box is walled in by semi-transparent screens, onto which is projected footage of the band playing behind the screens. The screens rise and fall as the set progresses. It feels a little like set-up The Smile used at Magazine during their inaugural shows in 2022, but taken to the next level. For a band who have always excelled in the field of stage tech, it is a simple but significant step up.

4. There is no support band

… but there is a light show! While the auditorium fills up, the speakers play a mix of glitchy electronica, doomy drum ‘n’ bass and distorted hip hop – you could imagine this is the kind of thing the band knocked out between them on a quiet Friday afternoon. But to warm up the crowd, we get a strange, Close Encounters-like communion between technologies. Lights shine on different blocks in the auditorium, prompting cheers which are met by squelchy bursts of analogue synth. It’s fun and solves the problem of who exactly would want the thankless task of opening for Radiohead..?

5. Radiohead are still not anyone’s idea of a conventional rock band

For a band predicated on constant motion, the biggest surprise of the night is how closely the setlist resembles Radiohead’s greatest hits. With a few exceptions, of course… wot, nothing off Pablo Honey?, you might ask. The twists and turns through the band’s canon might seem less adventurous than some diehard fans might like, but tonight’s 25 songs cover a lot of ground. Although songs from Hail To The Thief and OK Computer figure highly, nearly every iteration of Radiohead is accounted for. Satisfyingly, car park rave Radiohead (“Sit Down Stand Up”, The Gloaming”), Krautrock Radiohead (“The National Anthem”), Pink Floyd Radiohead (“Lucky”) all get a look in.

6. Hail To The Thief gets foregrounded

After opening unexpectedly with the hazy, Byrdsian jangle of “Let Down” from OK Computer, the band pepper the show’s first half with songs drawn from 2003’s Hail To The Thief. Early on, “2+2=5” and “Sit Down Stand Up” are nervy and explosive – a return of the paranoid Radiohead of old. They smother these anxieties in sub-bass for “The Gloaming”, only for them to resurface in the raw noise of “Myxomatosis”. With six songs taken from the album – including, later, “A Wolf At The Door” and “There There” – it’s possible that Radiohead sense an opportunity to recontextualise Hail To The Thief.

Originally recorded during the feverish peak of George W Bush’s ‘War on Terror’, it is now given renewed urgency by Donald Trump’s second term in office. “Don’t question my authority or put me in a box”. Yorke sings on “2+2=5” and “Hey, we can wipe you out anytime” on “Sit Down Stand Up”, phrases that seem all too relevant, 20 years after he first sang them.

7. The band are at the peak of their powers

Last time I saw Radiohead, at London’s Roundhouse on the A Moon Shaped Pool tour, they operated in close proximity to one another. When the walls of the box finally begin to rise, revealing the band themselves, we see Yorke, Ed O’Brien and the Greenwood brothers evenly spaced around the perimeter of the stage, with Selway and touring drummer Chris Vatalaro in the centre. Their individual stations are demarcated by banks of gear – amps, instruments, pedalboards. Yorke is the most active, shifting from one side of the box to the other, playing to different sections of the audience. The rave dancing is replaced elsewhere by an over-emphasised Chaplinesque shuffle or a moment where he appears to be dancing with his Melodica.

Colin, as usual, sticks close to Selway. Jonny, meanwhile, for the most part is hunched over one instrument or another – guitar, mostly – occasionally looking around to see where Yorke has got to. As the set progresses, they begin to move around a little – you might see Ed O’Brien meeting up with Colin for a short guitar-bass showdown during “The National Anthem”, say. Later, O’Brien gets to shred a little “Paranoid Android”. But really, this is about six men performing music with an intelligence, dignity and personal discretion at odds with corny rock traditions.

8. The hits keep coming…

A section in the middle of the show finds unexpected space for some of the band’s biggest moments. Kicking off with “No Surprises” – a song so great that no amount of waving phone lights can cheapen it – they run through the minor chord melancholia of “Videotape”, inspire a spontaneous outbreak of dancing for “Arpeggi” and even (good heavens) a clapalong for “Everything In Its Right Place”.

See also Radiohead’s 30 Greatest Songs

Incidentally, “Arpeggi” provides a rare moment for O’Brien to take the lead. With his guitars mixed way too low at every Radiohead concert I’ve been to, his chiming lead lines here are wonderfully atmospheric. As usual, it reminds me that I’d like to hear more from Ed than just textural backup for Jonny’s more defined playing. But if anything, this section underscores Radiohead’s rich gifts for melody. Before anyone gets too comfortable, they promptly swerve into the dystopian dubstep of “15 Step” and the fruity, Krautrock meltdown of “The National Anthem”.

9. The encore telescopes Radiohead’s evolutionary progress

After the main set closes with a dervish take on “Idioteque”, Radiohead return for an expanded encore drawn mostly from their late ‘90s/early ‘00s run. The exception is The Bends’ “Fake Plastic Trees” – the oldest song they play tonight. Despite provoking a mass singalong and more phone waving, this is still a peculiar, awkward, endearingly off-kilter piece of music – very much the kind of subversive writing that characterises a lot of Radiohead’s early work.

They follow it with two OK Computer cuts, “Subterranean Homesick Alien” and a marvellously splenetic “Paranoid Android”, before moving briskly on to Kid A and Amnesiac with “How To Disappear Completely” and “You And Whose Army”. It feels like a telescoped trip through Radiohead’s evolutionary steps from rock outsiders to radical experimentalists, becoming more mysterious as they get older.

They finish with a rousing “There There” – with Jonny and Ed O’Brien on drums – and an ineffable “Karma Police”.

10. This tour feels like an event

While Radiohead’s future is currently uncertain beyond December 12, when this tour finishes, these shows feel like a genuine event. Perhaps by not being tethered to a specific release, these shows allow Radiohead the opportunity to give back to the fans who’ve waited patiently for signs of new activity. As the final chords of “Karma Police” fade away, the band clap the audience, with O’Brien and Colin Greenwood making ‘hand heart’ gestures. Whether this is the end remains to be seen. But if it is Radiohead’s exit music, I can’t think of a better way than this to say goodbye.

Radiohead’s setlist at Moviestar Arena, Madrid, November 4, 2025

Let Down
2+2=5
Sit Down Stand Up
Bloom
Luck
Ful Stop
The Gloaming
Myxamatosis
No Surprises
Videotape
Arpeggi
Everything In Its Right Place
15 Step
The National Anthem
Daydreaming
Wolf At The Door
Bodysnatchers
Idioteque