[ad_2]
Experimental rockers Radiohead make their long awaited Austin City Limits Music Music Festival debut this week. Here are nine songs we’d love to hear them play at Zilker Park.
1. “Present Tense”
With its minimal bossa nova beat, the song captures the duality Radiohead nails so well — beautiful and bleak. It’s slow-and-steady creeping crescendo becomes increasingly haunting with each passing measure, building to a slightly sunny closing with steel drum-flavored synths and Thom Yorke’s repetition of “In you I’m lost.”
Likelihood: Count on it.
Dream scenario: The set opens with Thom Yorke walking out solo with a boombox and a guitar. “Hi, I’ve got a tape I want to play,” he says, doing a funky little Thom dance move. A simple drum machine beat kicks in as Thom is joined by Jonny Greenwood for an intimate, stripped-down take on the song.
2. “15 Step”
Anything from the lovely “In Rainbows” would be a welcome addition to Radiohead’s ACL Fest set. It’s more likely we’ll hear the frequently played (and arguably superior) “Reckoner,” “Nude,” or “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi,” but I’d be interested to hear the band’s current take on “15 Step,” which they have played at least once during their current round of touring.
Likelihood: It’s possible.
Dream scenario: The “In Rainbows” opener’s crunchy computerized percussion gets taken to another planet as Thom and the gang are joined on stage by the University of Texas marching band — à la Ghostland Observatory at ACL Fest 2009.
3. “Talk Show Host”
Even non-Radiohead fans should be able to agree the song — most known for a remix’s inclusion on the soundtrack to Baz Luhrman’s “Romeo + Juliet” — just oozes cool. With a trip-hop, Portishead sound and lyrics that only Radiohead could get away with (“I’ll be waiting with a gun and a pack of sandwiches”), “Talk Show Host” is a must for the band’s ACL Fest setlist.
Likelihood: They’ve played it this year, so it could happen.
4. “Paranoid Android”
“Paranoid Android” is Radiohead’s nightmarish version of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The six-and-a-half minute “OK Computer” opus shreds, foregoing typical pop song structure for four distinct parts and two guitar solos.
Likelihood: Most likely.
Dream scenario: Thom pulls you up from the crowd to do the backing “the panic, the vomit” vocals in the final section. You become fast friends and are asked to tour with the band.
5. “Idioteque”
Radiohead at their progressive bleep-bloop music-making best, “Idioteque” sounds like it comes from another time and planet, even 16 years after its initial release.
Likelihood: 100 percent you’ll hear it at ACL.
6. “Spectre”
Radiohead’s moody strings-and-piano–driven prospective Bond ballad for the recent 007 flick of the same name has yet to make an appearance in Radiohead’s live repertoire, so the chances of hearing it at ACL Fest are slim. But if the band brings along a string section, maybe it could happen. Hearing those sweeping, uneasy Jonny-arranged strings at Zilker Park after sunset would make for quite the memory.
Likelihood: Not gonna happen.
Dream scenario: Daniel Craig comes out on stage to introduce the song and goes on the record to say that Sam Smith song was a total snooze. He agrees to come back for one final Bond movie if Eon Productions uses Radiohead’s track for the film.
7. “Life in a Glasshouse”
The Amnesiac closer, a swampy horn-driven New Orleans jazz funeral procession, is one of the band’s more out-there tracks, making it somehow arguably the least “Radiohead” song they’ve ever produced and maybe, in a way, the most Radiohead — fully embracing the jazz influence that underlies the majority of their catalog. It’s also hardly ever been played live, likely due to the mild inconvenience of needing a trumpet, clarinet and trombone and the musicians to play them.
Likelihood: Even less likely than “Spectre,” but a guy can dream.
8. “True Love Waits”
Radiohead listeners waited 20 years to get a recorded version of fan favorite “True Love Waits” and were pleasantly surprised to see it as the album closer of “A Moon Shaped Pool.” Speaking of the long wait to record it, producer Nigel Godrich said to Rolling Stone: “We could do ‘True Love Waits’ and make it sound like John Mayer. Nobody wants to do that.” Even more surprising than the song’s inclusion on the band’s ninth album was the beauty of the song’s final form: Minimal and melancholy, it may be one of the finest tunes the band has ever produced.
Likelihood: They’ve played it a handful of times this year. Let’s say “1 in 10.”
9. “Creep”
The band has been welcoming the former setlist black sheep back to the fold this year. It’s a pretty straightforward take on their breakout hit, but exciting stuff nonetheless for fans and previously angsty teenagers everywhere who may have previously assumed they would never hear it live.
Likelihood: It’ll happen.
Dream scenario: The crowd sing-along thing is fine and good, but the band let’s Jonny go wild after the final chorus, building on that angry little guitar “chug-chug” and going completely berserk for five minutes of face-melting guitar noise, terrifying those in the crowd who only know Radiohead from “Creep” karaoke performances.
Radiohead at ACL Fest
The band plays at 8 p.m. both Fridays on the Samsung stage.
Let's block ads! (Why?)
[ad_1]
Source link
No comments:
Post a Comment