War on want

Radiohead have been at the top of the musical tree for so long now that it’s easy to forget what an irreducibly strange band they are. Last Thursday, during the first of their three hugely anticipated gigs at the Roundhouse, they uncharacteristically played three popular favourites on the run — in their defence, it was the encore — causing someone in the audience to call out for another one. ‘No,’ replied Thom Yorke with a smile, ‘this is all getting too much fun.’ And with that, he launched into the melancholy bossa nova shuffle of ‘Present Tense’ from the new album A Moon Shaped Pool — as if to make it clear that giving people what they want (or misguidedly think they do) would be a betrayal of everything that Radiohead stand for.

The really strange bit, though, isn’t that he’s right, but that the audience wouldn’t have it any other way.