Amid a brilliantly mesmeric display of video and lighting technology, British art rock heavyweights Radiohead ripped, oozed, slithered and slinked their way through a near-epic performance of 23 songs during their Leap Day concert at the Tampa Bay Times Forum. The band delivered explosive, quietly transcendent and sublimely beautiful moments as guided by frontman Thom Yorke's mournful serenades, and moments of concentrated experimentation, when the musicians simply layered percussion, guitar and waves of synth haze together into a noisy propulsive brew that seemed chaotic until it was reined in with seeming ease. Some people say Radiohead is overrated. This performance proved they are rated exactly as they should be, and deserve all the praise they’ve earned, along with some they haven't.
This article appears in Sep 20-26, 2012.