April, 2012: Radiohead, Key Arena, Seattle, WA - A hallowed pontoon. A plasmic canopy hoisted. Dual drummers Phil Selway and Clive Deamer stitched and sutured beat foundations the band gravitated and formed around. Curvature of the songs and the lights cycled and tapped out a Morse code of DNA. Vine like. Variegated frequencies bounced off the walls of their cathedral.

A languid pinpoint hive-hum stuttered and routed through sequencers Johnny Greenwood occasionally looped and inverted. Sound was somewhat muddy in the beginning but was slowly dialed in. The full house Seattle crowd was swept up and in. Completely responsive. The thousands didn’t seem like thousands.

Thom Yorke is a funny bunny, living in the beautiful delivery of his tones. Songs where he’s not playing an instrument dangle him like a puppet causing spastic hops and gesticulations. Yorke is somehow simultaneously old and young. Existing outside age, but inside the amniotic sack of the sound, connected to the mother by his umbilical in ear monitor chords.

“Morning Mr. Magpie” was a highlight cast out of Selway and Deamer’s conjoined four-armed ligament like they were sending a message on a telegraph machine. Starting the second encore was another highlight “Give Up the Ghost” with Yorke and Greenwood alone onstage tranquilizing the horde.

A gracious, nimble Clive Deamer spoke backstage afterward draped in a comfortable looking zip up sweater. We talked about psychiatric nursing care in England, Skrillex hair do’s, and Seattle’s in progress Proton Therapy Center at Northwest Hospital.

He confirmed that Johnny Greenwood had injured his thumb and that it was causing him some problems, prompting the band to skip certain songs. He also talked about the immense backdrop of LED lights behind the band onstage.

The LED’s are inside plastic water bottles, not light bulbs. He said it was like being inside DNA. Or maybe I said it looked like being inside DNA. The band had a long drive to San Jose ahead of them, he bid adieu, and was off to retire to his bunk inside the mobile fortress of the Radiohead bus.

Set List:

Bloom

15 Step

Airbag

Little by Little

Myxomatosis

The Gloaming

Morning Mr. Magpie

Pyramid Song

The Daily Mail

These Are My Twisted Words

Nude

Identikit

Lotus Flower

There There

Feral

Idioteque

Encore:

How to Disappear Completely

Weird Fishes/Arpeggi

You and Whose Army?

Lucky

Give Up the Ghost

Reckoner

Everything In Its Right Place