Radiohead – The O2, London, Friday November 21, 2025

Danny Eccleston

Something’s different, though. Many readers will be aware that Radiohead are playing their 2025 shows ‘in the round’. More precisely, their centrally-located stage is a smallish black cylinder surrounded by retractable scrim, on which minimal lights and video-screen matter displays. Some will recognise the wheeze from the earliest shows by The Smile – the side-project consisting of Yorke, Greenwood and jazz drummer Tom Skinner – which debuted less than ten minutes walk across the North Greenwich peninsula in January 2022. But that was for a club-sized audience and three players. Sometimes tonight you wonder how the six-piece Radiohead manage not to bump into each other or – especially when Yorke gets into his rag-doll dance – fall off.

The advantage, apart from the crowd’s relatively intimate proximity to the band, is the sense of a musical collective playing for each other as much as an audience. Radiohead’s best music has always appeared to surprise them as much as anyone else; in this format, its alchemy reveals itself as if in moments of fresh discovery – especially important where there’s no ‘new’ material to deliver. This show is all about new approaches to old friends, almost all of them welcome.

First impressions – Radiohead sound more ‘organic’ in 2025: less of the pioneering electronica hybrid of the early century, more rock. The Bends’ spiralling Planet Telex kicks things off, a Jonny Greenwood-as-axe-murderer showcase. 2+2=5 gets into its paranoid churn phase early and sustains it. Setlists have been fluid on the continent but most have been neglectful of recent albums The King Of Limbs and A Moon Shaped Pool and heavy on Hail To The Thief, OK Computer and In Rainbows. This is as close to a Radiohead Greatest Hits Tour as perhaps we will ever see, and no-one here is complaining.

Honouring the ‘in the round’ aesthetic, Radiohead’s mobile players swop spots so fans get their share of Yorke. The most remarkable aspect of the show is his embrace of a ringmaster role. There’s no banter as such, yet an almost disconcerting sense of the singer‘s enjoyment – even good cheer. Perhaps this takes the desperate edge off some of the songs, the chilling intensity of modern horror that this band uniquely delivers, but the upside is a surprising surplus of more traditional gig vibes – communality and catharsis. Ergo, Kid A’s Idioteque is tonight more groove than grumble, In Rainbows’ 15 Step an excuse for Yorke to circle the stage in manic frug-spasms.

Revelations? An early, skyrocketing Lucky – with Jonny Greenwood giving it Full Gilmour – and a lyrical, healing No Surprises signal that we’re in for a people-pleasing show. Bloom, with Jonny joining drummers Vatalaro and Phil Selway in a polyrhythmic percussion parlay and Ed O’Brien’s brittle guitar offering a whiff of desert blues. Kid A, with Yorke on tambourine, is an unrecognisable hippie-psych freakout, National Anthem – with bassist Colin Greenwood in excelcis – a kind of demonic baggy.

Bum notes? Maybe other viewers were in better spots for the sound. Close to the stage on the venue floor it felt like we were missing something – some focus and volume. Sometimes the band did seem to get in each other’s way, but musically, not physically. Rather clumsy, tonight’s take on the surely-now-irreplaceable Everything In Its Right Place will not enter this band’s pantheon of performances. But these are moments that raise a quizzical eyebrow, not howls of protest.

After a thumping There There (Ed O’Brien busy on his two floor toms – their presence on stage tonight the one setlist giveaway) Radiohead retreat into a hole in the floor of the stage (it’s unclear from MOJO’s vantage where they disappear to – perhaps their hi-tech bandstand has TARDIS capabilities) then re-emerge for an encore that asks fascinating questions about this band and where they go next. Fake Plastic Trees is an open goal, duly scored. OK Computer secret weapon Let Down twinkles as the lights on their cylinder stage scintillate. Paranoid Android, on the other hand, falls short. Jonny’s trepanning squalls of solo are underpowered – can they unleash this baleful beast as they once did, full of youthful nastiness? You And Whose Army? is a more successful revival of past narks – Yorke’s Blair-baiting slowburn feels adjusted to celebrate his band and their fans. Together, they ride tonight.

It ends with Karma Police, one of Radiohead’s loosest, simplest songs – and of course another singalong. Tonight, its pain (“I lost myself”) feels like a rueful memory, its dymanic fulcrum (“This is what you get, if you mess with us”) now more a joke shared with the audience than bitter threat. When Radiohead descend into their time machine for the final time, its refrains endure, mingling with the strains of their outro tape – The Fall’s Oh! Brother – as the articles of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights scroll down their screens.

What have we learned about Radiohead? Simply that they are still unique, and great, and always morphing, sometimes radically, sometimes subtly. How that might manifest on the next Radiohead album, if there is one, at least ten years since their last, is unhinted, as is the future tenor of this more approachable, openly crowd-pleasing version of the band. There are surely, however, limits to that. After all, they didn’t play Creep. Then again, no-one shouted for it.

Her generation may be fading away, but Staples is not the last to know empathy, nor – despite her concerns – will she be the
“last of us”. There’s enough strength in that powerhouse voice to suggest there are more albums to come, but her message to us is 
that there’s no time to waste, we need to do the right thing today. Don’t just hope things will work out, be more like Mavis.

Setlist:

Planet Telex

2 + 2 = 5

Sit Down. Stand Up.

Lucky

Bloom

15 Step

The Gloaming

Kid A

No Surprises

Videotape

Weird Fishes/Arpeggi

Idioteque

Everything In Its Right Place

The National Anthem

Daydreaming

Jigsaw Falling Into Place

Bodysnatchers

There There

Encore:

Fake Plastic Trees

Let Down

Paranoid Android

You And Whose Army?

A Wolf At The Door

Just

Karma Police