Lollapalooza Day 1: Radiohead rules (duh)

Our regular contributor Michael Judge is among 80,000 music fans in Chicago this weekend for the fourth annual Lollapalooza in Grant Park. Here's his dispatch from Day 1. Above: Radiohead takes the crowd into "The Gloaming."

CHICAGO -- It will  likely surprise no one that Radiohead put on a phenomenal two-hour show. Performed live, the songs from last year’s sparse, spacious "In Rainbows," wrapped in mantles of strings and reverb on the record, acquired a nervy post-punk energy that recalls some of its formative influences, like Joy Division and the "More Songs About Buildings and Food"-era Talking Heads.

Thom Yorke’s singing seems to get edgier and more neurotic as the days pass, and the astonishing venom and menace he injected into “The Gloaming” and “Paranoid Android” made the majestic “Lucky” and “Fake Plastic Trees” all the more welcome.

Until Radiohead arrived on stage, Brooklyn experimentalists Grizzly Bear held the title of "Best set of the day": a rich and precise continuum that, impressively, lost virtually none of its cohesion amid the lengthy distances it had to travel in a festival environment.

Lowlights: Brazilian dance-rockers CSS somehow extended a single hour into what felt like the length of a presidential administration -- the Reagan years, thanks to the campy synths and canned drum tracks.

Georgian garage rockers the Black Lips have on record a fuzzy, loose sound that recalls Nuggets stalwarts (the Standells, the Electric Prunes, et al) and the early Velvet Underground. However, they proved themselves unable to maintain even an admittedly lax set of standards during a show that primarily consisted of guitarist Cole Alexander’s seriously sub-Iggy Pop “antics” and imaginary-guitar-hero pomposity.

Pleasant surprise: The Go Team might fairly be called a one-trick pony of a band, but theirs is a trick that can only be found under their own big top, and the potency of their brightly-hued guitar-rock/Motown orchestration/old-school hip-hop mélange makes it perfect for large crowds gathered in the summer heat. Frontwoman Ninja’s metronomic flow is a refreshing blast out of the Grandmaster Melle Mel playbook, and the group’s two-drummers-plus-programming rhythmic attack turned their set into a continuous, deep groove.

Biggest letdown: The Kills are, to be sure, a very good band: The crackling tension of their boho electro-noir is palpably electric under the right conditions. They naturally rely, however, on a sweaty sort of nightclub energy that has no hope of surviving the large vistas of a large outdoor festival. More’s the pity.

| Michael Judge, Special to The Star

Comments

[Casey]

I know radiohead hasn't played "Creep" live for a few years now... Did they do it at Lollapalooza?

[Jennifer]

Nope, no Creep. But Paranoid Android was amazing. Add to that the fireworks over Soldier Field that seemed to be perfectly timed to hit right at the song's big crescendo. Very moving.

A nice surprise was Holy F*ck. They sure expand the definition of the word "instrument".

[Tim Finn]

I think of all the bands that have emerged since I was 21 (so, so many years ago), Radiohead is the biggest, best, most exciting, most adventurous, the most "most" band of the past 25-30 years. It helps that they have endured (or I'd have to consider opinions from Guns 'N Roses fans) and they've experimented so promiscuously and extravagantly and successfully (or Metallica fans could weigh in). Am I deluded?

[Josh]

For some reason, Radiohead doesn't quite do it for me. I like them.... and have several of their albums, but don't love them. I haven't yet seen them live either.

[Jennifer]

I agree Tim - they are just such a hard band to draw comparisons to.

Speaking of Guns 'N Roses, Slash made a visit to the Kidzapalooza stage. I stopped by to listen to Perry Ferrell perform with the School of Rock All-Stars and whaddyaknow, there was Slash offering some face melting solos. But to be fair, the All-Star kid held his own, not far behind Slash. The bonus was they were performing some classic Jane's Addiction songs: Jane Says and Mountain Song. That's the closest I'll come to a Jane's Addiction show. Well, unless you count the Satellite Party show last year. Regardless, I'll take it.