Radiohead 'bends'

The curiosity in watching Radiohead live is not necessarily in watching lead vocalist Thom Yorke's gawky, lazy-eyed jitterbug around the stage. Or at least not so much anymore.\nInstead, it's more about how the band executes its music as it combines electronic and rock textures into a 21st century update of Kraftwerk or Pink Floyd. In other words, it's more about Radiohead the performers rather than Radiohead the artists.\nAt a densely packed Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wisc., last Saturday -- the closest they came to Bloomington was St. Louis the following night, and don't we have the radio programmers from around these parts to thank for that? -- the band displayed a versatile form with Yorke playing the part of mad scientist and guitarist Jonny Greenwood stretching out to impromptu drum kits and all kinds of effects pedals.\nIf Yorke is developing as an artist, it's moving from the cynical to the wicked. An ominous piano intro drove "We Suck Young Blood" and turned into a weird, arrhythmic audience clap-along. "Where I Begin and You End" had Yorke imparting, "I will eat you alive," in mantra-like fashion while bobbing along with Philip Selway's syncopated drumming.\nAnd when he sang "blah, blah, blah" in "Backdrifts," he didn't sound so much like a bored intellectual as a bored bully. At the coda of the fantastic "Sit Down, Stand Up," he sang "the raindrops" over and over like Chinese water torture on fast-forward. He introduced "There There" by saying that it is a song about "peace, love and whatever."\nWhile the band showed determination in pulling off Hail to the Thief, its most recent record, it tried to forge a similar attitude from its oldies but goodies. After all, while "Lucky" and "Fake Plastic Trees" might be some of the prettier songs of the Radiohead canon, the lyrics about plane crashes and ineffectual cosmetic surgery aren't exactly uplifting.\nThankfully, Yorke lightened the tone a bit with a comic mugging for the onstage cameras during "You and Whose Army?," a greatly appreciated gesture for those having to slog through inexorable traffic delays to make it to the middle of Nowheresville and then get caught in the middle of the lawn with no view of the stage. The humor was taken personally.\nIt also helped that the band's sound system and light show were first-rate. It was, in other words, well executed.