Radiohead are currently on a brief U.S. tour in support of their beautiful new album A Moon Shaped Pool. The tour started last week, with the band triumphantly returned to Madison Square Garden after a 13 year absence. They played OK Computer track “Let Down” for the first time in 10 years on night one, then they surprised almost everyone in the room on night two when they played “Creep” for the first time on American soil since 2004. Radiohead’s two nights at MSG were a warm-up for an even bigger performance: a headlining set at Chicago’s Lollapalooza. Their set turned out to be one for the ages, with a career-spanning setlist filled with fan-favorites, relative rarities, and the unique atmosphere that only Radiohead can provide.
The band has started every show this summer with the first five tracks from AMSP, but, for the first time this summer, left out tracks 3 and 4 (the groovy “Decks Dark” and the acoustic “Desert Island Disk”), opting instead to skip from the beautiful “Daydreaming” straight into the synth-induced panic attack that is “Ful Stop”. The band kept the energy extremely high, following the new material with some of their most intense songs in “2+2=5”, “Myxomatosis”, “My Iron Lung”, and “Climbing Up The Walls”.  Fan favorites “Pyramid Song”, “The Gloaming”, “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”, and “There There” all made their way into the set as well, and the band of course included their traditional classics “Everything In It’s Right Place” and “Idioteque towards the end of the set.
Radiohead returned for their encore with another version of “Let Down”, now played at all three U.S. shows this summer after the aforementioned 10 year gap. “Paranoid Android” is one of Radiohead’s best live songs, and the epic multi-section tune worked wonders at Lollapalooza. “Nude” is, in contrast, Radiohead’s most delicate song, so pairing these two together, followed by the encore-closing rager of “Bodysnatchers”, shows the band’s diversity.
They took one more short encore break before taking the stage one more time, delivering an epic pairing of “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” and “Karma Police” that left the crowd singing into the night’s sky as they exited the massive festival.
Radiohead’s set was streamed on Sunday, and thanks to YouTube user MusicFest we can now watch Radiohead’s incredible Lollapalooza set in all of its glory.