British experimental rock band Radiohead kicked off its U.S. tour Monday night at West Palm Beach's Cruzan Amphitheatre -- and despite front man Thom Yorke declaring at one point, ''Sorry about that. We obviously did not practice that enough,'' the group put together a tight two-hour set that drew from all of the band's seven albums, except for 1993's Pablo Honey, which gave us the hit Creep.
Radiohead wisely started with tunes from its new album In Rainbows, which the band in ground-breaking fashion offered for whatever fans wanted to pay on New Year's Day. Yorke proved he's much more than a mere singer on All I Need by dealing out crashing chords on the piano, then showing his guitar prowess on the ragged garage-rocker Bodysnatchers, amid dozens of hanging neon orange bars partially obscuring six video screens artfully showing different views of the band.
Yorke then played intricate riffs while singing There There from the album Hail to the Thief, with fellow guitarists Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien drumming on double tom-toms. Yorke's constant, compulsive shaking back and forth of his head and brilliant vocals encourage one to consider him a musical idiot savant -- but he's more of a bandleader. Though Yorke showed limited interaction with the crowd -- ''Hi.'' ''Can you hear all right?'' -- he nonetheless controlled the night, taking over the piano for the flamenco-beat Morning Bell. And his falsetto singing on Nude and Reckoner was lovely.
The beauty of the music of How To Disappear Completely, during which guitarist Jonny Greenwood played an old electronic instrument called the martenot, made subversive lyrics such as ''I'm not here -- this isn't happening'' sound transcendent.
This was far from a greatest-hits night. Radiohead didn't play the standards Creep, Paranoid Android, Karma Police, No Surprises, High & Dry, Fake Plastic Trees, Let Down, Subterranean Homesick Alien, Lucky or Knives Out. But the beautiful guitar interplay of Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, the falsetto brilliance of Yorke on the techno-dripped Idioteque, a lively Airbag, guitarist Greenwood sampling and looping Yorke's vocals on Everything In Its Right Place, plus compelling versions of The National Anthem, Just, Faust Arp, Exit Music (For a Film) and House of Cards sent the crowd home feeling like everything, indeed, was in its right place.
