Radiohead live in Berlin: New Yorke, New Yorke

Deafening sigh: The art rock giants are celebrating a furious debut to their Berlin short vacation.

Days of anxiety – unfortunately not with the head, but for the head of Radiohead: Thom Yorke. After the stops of his main band’s comeback concert series, simply named “2025 Radiohead Tour”, in Madrid, Bologna and London, he contracted a severe sore throat. The first two gigs in Copenhagen had to be postponed at short notice. Four days before Radiohead’s four-day residency in Berlin, the all-clear was given: the man had recovered, the show goes on, the beat goes ’round and ‘round. The other two concerts scheduled for the Danish capital took place, and anyone who didn’t know in Berlin would never have thought it possible that the 57-year-old was just bedridden.

At the latest with the video for the lead single from their 2011 album, “Lotus flower“, in which Yorke extensively showcased his idiosyncratic dance moves, his contortions are legendary, shared and varied in thousands of memes. He jerks and jerks across the stage as if he were changing, as if he had to drive out the ghosts of winter that have taken possession of him. Give up the Ghost. But one by one, everything in its right place.

The iconic round stage

First of all, the now iconic round stage is still surrounded by huge video walls and looks like one of those mixed martial arts cages. But today instead of blood, tears of joy should drip. As soon as the rectangular frames of the individual walls illuminate areas of the hall at rhythmic intervals, accompanied by accentuated spherical sounds, which elicits screams of joy from the audience like at a football game, instead of bone-crunching knock-outs, one feels more reminiscent of people’s communication via a light tone organ with the mother UFO in Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. This dialogue with the fans begins just in time for prime time at 8:15 p.m. before the five band members, who have been playing together unchanged for 40 years – initially under the name On A Friday – rise as if from underground caves to the above-ground stage, supported live by Chris Vatalaro on second drums since this year. The concert starts with the delay effects on the guitars of “Planet Telex”, the opener of THE BENDS, the album from which Radiohead played in the same league as REM in 1995 – whose Peter Buck had pimped up his group’s rock record, MONSTER, with related gadgets in the same year.

No surprises

The use of the drums is the first of many overwhelming moments: a thunderstorm of green light descends on the euphoric cheering crowd, the band appears alienated with filters on the screens, which provide just enough visibility so that you can clearly see the originals behind them. During the second song, “2 + 2 = 5”, the rigid curtain rises and completely exposes the musicians. No surprises with the setlist: Although the band rehearsed around 70 songs and rearranges the pieces for each show, there were no live debuts on the tour in Berlin. But if at all, this is only the only flaw in a magnificent performance.

Mass hypnosis in “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”, states like just before the mosh pit in the sonic explosions of “Paranoid Android”, exuberant dancing in “Idioteque” and “Bodysnatchers”, as if we were dealing with calculable four-to-the-floor electro and not convoluted avant-garde rock. Jonny Greenwood mistreats his guitar with the usual killer instinct, colleague Ed O’Brien impersonates the B-showmaster after Yorke with sweeping inciting gestures, not unlike a chicken (with all the unborn chicken voices in his head?) stalks around in circles, pressing buttons here and there, pulling switches, then sits back down at the piano and gives his fans moments of soul-cleansing catharsis at the end of another challenging year with tracks like “Videotape” and the pink-washed “Karma Police”.

And what’s next?

What’s next for the band? Will the first album in ten years be released in 2026? Indifferent for the moment. If this tour, like the other great British returnees of the year, Oasis, marks the end of a unique career, then it couldn’t be drawn more impressively. How then should we carry on without Radiohead? Oh, it’ll be okay, God loves His children, right? God loves His children, yeah.

Editorial recommendations

Setlist

1. Planet Telex
2. 2 + 2 = 5
3. Sit down. Stand up.
4. Lucky
5. 15 steps
6. The Gloaming
7. Kid A
8. No surprises
9. Video tape
10. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
11. Idioteque
12. Everything In Its Right Place
13. Bloom
14. The National Anthem
15. Daydreaming
16. All I need
17. Let Down
18. Bodysnatchers
19. Fake plastic trees
20. Jigsaw Falling Into Place
21. Paranoid android
22. A Wolf At The Door
23. You And Whose Army?
24. Just
25. Karma Police