If you worship at the altar of Radiohead, but couldn’t quite bring yourself to pay Coachella prices to see Thom Yorke & Co. headline this year’s fest, you’re in luck: The British rock titans are swinging up to the Bay Area between their two weekend Coachella stints, playing back-to-back shows at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre on April 17 and 18. Tickets go on sale this Friday, Jan. 20 at 10 am.
Radiohead’s most recent studio album, A Moon Shaped Pool, was released in May 2016 to general critical acclaim — despite being a somewhat challenging record, perhaps, for the average casual listener. A darkly grandiose art-rock album, it’s epic in scope, with several songs that are widely believed to be about Yorke’s separation from his longtime partner, artist Rachel Owen. (Owen died in December 2016.)
These are the same factors that make A Moon Shaped Pool, in this writer’s opinion, not necessarily a great album for a festival environment in the first place: the band’s set of mostly new material at 2016’s Outside Lands felt out of sync with the hordes of jacked-up kids; the volume and energy both seemed low. Call me a stick in the mud, but you try appreciating sweeping, swirling, introspective writing about love and loss and grief while a drunk, shirtless bro is pumping an inflatable flamingo in the air and screaming “OVER HERE!” into his cell phone right next to your face.
All of which gives me more hope for this relatively intimate experience, tucked into the trees on a Berkeley hillside. Tickets are $95; get ready to click quickly over here.
