Radiohead sent the internet into a frenzy last week when they announced their first gigs in seven years – but for many fans the wait to see Thom Yorke and company play live is set to go on even longer.
Demand was so high that the band put a ballot system in place to decide who would have the opportunity to buy tickets for the performances, which take place in London, Madrid, Bologna, Copenhagen and Berlin this coming November and December.
If, like me, you weren’t lucky enough to win the Radiohead lottery there’s always the resale next month; but until then why not console yourself by listening to an album that documents the band at a pivotal period of their career?
Separated at birth
I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings was recorded across multiple shows on Radiohead’s 2001 tour.
The band had just made Kid A and Amnesiac, a pair of albums that were recorded together but released eight months apart, which challenged everything that their existing fanbase had come to expect from their music.
Having emerged among the Britpop bands of the early to mid-nineties, on Kid A and Amnesiac Radiohead swapped the guitar-driven songs of their first three albums – Pablo Honey, The Bends, and OK Computer – for a more experimental, electronica-inspired sound that had more in common with Autechre than Elastica.
For many it wasn’t until hearing these songs performed live that they really started to make sense – and for me that was on I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings.
Songs such as The National Anthem, Morning Bell and I Might Be Wrong, which on record I had initially found to be hard to warm to, suddenly felt altogether more human when performed live on stage in front of a crowd. The icy peaks depicted on the cover of Kid A had started to thaw.
That feeling is perhaps never more apparent than on Like Spinning Plates, which on Amnesiac is a skittering soundscape with a heavily treated lead vocal, but here is transformed beautifully into an almost unrecognisable piano ballad. If you listen carefully around the 50-second mark you can actually hear somebody in the crowd shout ‘Spinning Plates!’ as they realise what song the band are playing.
With the studio sheen removed, Idioteque becomes a full-on rave anthem, while Everything In Its Right Place morphs into a digital jam session, with Thom Yorke’s vocal chopped up and manipulated as the song stretches to almost twice the length of its recorded version.
The only track not from Kid A or Amnesiac here is True Love Waits – a song that for many years existed only in live sets until it was recorded for 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool. For me, though, the version on I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings remains the definitive one.
On Amnesiac, Dollars and Cents is outshone by a number the album's earlier tracks, particularly Pyramid Song, You and Whose Army? and Knives Out, but here it's altogether more menacing. That's the feeling that should come through if your system is doing it justice, with an insistent Colin Greenwood bassline that anchors the entire song, and Thom Yorke practically spitting out some of the lyrics on the way to a more intense ending.
True Love Waits
If there’s one thing wrong with I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings it’s that it’s over too soon.
At just eight songs long there are a significant number of tracks that the band played at the time that aren’t included. (If you're willing to venture into murkier parts of the internet there are very high-quality, full-length bootlegs from the era available; but we couldn't possibly endorse such activity.)
I’d love to hear a longer version that includes renditions of Pyramid Song, How to Disappear Completely, and the title track from Kid A – but then there’s also something to be said for that brevity.
When I first heard I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings back in 2001 it did enough in 40 minutes to convince me to revisit Kid A and Amnesiac and, having had the human core of those songs revealed to me, change my perception of those records for the better.
I have since been to see Radiohead play live nearly a dozen times, and while it seems unlikely that I'll get to add to that total when they tour this winter, at least I have I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings to fall back on until they return. Hopefully I won't have to wait another seven years.
MORE:
The 12 best Radiohead songs to test your hi-fi system
Radiohead’s most underrated album is one of my all-time favourite test records
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
