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I had mixed expectations going into this show, so I'm not too disappointed that I didn't like it more than I did. Thom is (obviously) a musical hero of mine - both because of Radiohead and much of his solo work. I knew this wouldn't be like the shows he did as a band with Atoms for Peace, but wasn't sure how much this would be like a DJ set. In the end, it was somewhere in between.
There was a lot of head-down button-pressing and knob-twiddling, but both Thom and Nigel did break out guitars for quite a few songs (plus a couple on keyboard for Thom). Thom was also pretty animated, often dancing in his trademark awkwardly entertaining style. Despite that, it's hard to give many points for performance during this show. I didn't really like many of the new songs, and I might even go as far as to say that some of the ones that I knew were a ruined a bit by the new overly-electronic stylings and improvisational singing - "The Clock" being a prime example of this. Seemingly every song had a newly conceived camouflage of an intro (and some also an outro), which were on the whole hit or miss - mostly miss. There were definitely some highlights, though, including new tune "Not the News" and an excellent rendition of "Default". Thom definitely still has some great pipes (as displayed during "Atoms for Peace" and "Suspirium"), even if he sometimes seems like he'd rather not try. One might conjecture that his age showed a bit when he hilariously forgot a couple of lines during "Truth Ray", but I've known him to do this type of thing for a while. I would be remiss if I did not point out that the visuals on the backing screens were pretty spectacular the whole show.
I'm probably being too harsh on this concert, though - mostly because I'm such a huge fan of Thom's work. Despite the low-ish rating, I did enjoy a lot of it, and wouldn't dare ask for my time or money back.
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Setlist: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/thom-yorke/2018/kings-theatre-brooklyn-ny-439733cb.html
Rating: 4.1/5
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