Radiohead Resurrect “Just” and “Optimistic” in Madrid

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, image via YouTube.

Radiohead returned to Madrid’s Movistar Arena to wrap up the first stop on their long–awaited reunion tour. The legendary avant-rock quintet promised a different show for all 20 dates on their first tour in seven years, and the final pair of performances on November 7 and 8 continued that trend after their exhilarating kickoff and a follow-up that swapped out more than half of their setlist.

Radiohead’s performance on Friday, Nov. 7 commenced with “Planet Telex,” drawn from 1995’s The Bends and featured as a show opener for the first time since 2008, then proceeded with “2 + 2 = 5,” which is quickly emerging as a go-to in the band’s early set; The Hail to the Thief cut’s renewed prominence, alongside a slight emphasis on the 2003 album throughout their setlists, follows the band’s recent surprise archival release, Hail to the Thief Live Recordings 2003-2009, as well as frontman Thom Yorke’s prior work on Hamlet Hail to the Thief.

Radiohead’s setlists are drawing on a bank of 65 songs that Thom Yorke compiled to ensure changes for each show, with the frontman, Ed O’Brien and Philip Selway taking the lead on nightly curation. In the band’s first two shows, they debuted a staggering 39 of those, and it seems the remainder will be doled out a bit more sparingly as they continue on the road. The group’s shows mostly shuffled around the setlists, which already contain a heap of the band’s most iconic songs.

That said, the band has continued to dutifully distinguish each show with at least a single surprise. On Friday night, after closing out their main set with “Idioteque” and opening the encore with “Fake Plastic Trees,” and just before a finale of “Karma Police,” Radiohead performed “Just,” pulled from The Bends and offered live for the first time since 2009. On Saturday, the band opened with “2 + 2 = 5” again, then delivered the tour debut of “Optimistic,” from Kid A, before a set-closing “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” and an encore bookended by “Let Down” and “Everything in Its Right Place.”

Radiohead will take the stage next at Bologna, Italy’s Unipol Arena with four shows from Nov. 14-18. They’ll make three further stops at London’s O2 Arena, Copenhagen’s Royal Arena and Berlin’s Uber Arena, each of which will host four performances broken into pairs, through Dec. 12. Find more information at radiohead.com.