Review: Thom Yorke was so good I went two nights in a row

Lyric Waiwiri-Smith makes the case for seeing your favourite artist in concert again, and again, and again.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Spark Arena was hosting multiple daddy-daughter nights over the long weekend. In pairs of geezers and Gen Zers, retired sad-teenagers-turned-fathers took their children for a musical education by way of Thom Yorke’s solo show in Auckland. The young girl sitting in front of me seemed pained throughout, but myself and the man I sat next to on Saturday had shared a laugh before the show – we’d already seen Yorke the night before.

Titled “everything”, Yorke’s solo tour is a walk down memory lane of the career of a melancholic man who is treated as a god by other sad men, covering …. Everything. As well as Radiohead’s nine-album strong discography, Yorke has released three solo projects, a recent album with The Smile, and in two hours he manages to cover all these bases, while making plenty of room for what everyone is really here to see: their favourite Radiohead deep cuts.

With just himself, a guitar passed along by stagehands and DJ decks and synths covering all of his angles, Yorke told the crowd on Friday night he “fucking hate[s] working alone”. But a one-man show, dipping between glitchy beats and piano ballads, made Yorke appear perfectly in his element as he danced between the dials, keys and machines. The lack of sonic coherence didn’t really matter much – it was just like listening to a Radiohead album.

Those expecting an hour or so of music to cry to may have temporarily believed their fate had been sealed when Yorke opened the show with slow burners ‘The Eraser’, ‘Let Down’ and ‘Last I Heard’. Then he played ‘Packt Like Sardines’, and the show really kicked off with the peaks and valleys in sounds he’s traversed through the years, whether it was the stripped back ‘Videotape’ or electronic tracks ‘Not the News’ and ‘Cymbal Rush’, amped up enough to blow through Spark Arena’s roof.

But the roof didn’t blow, because in a rare feat for the venue, Spark Arena sounded its best for Yorke. It’s hardly an arena famous for its quality acoustics, and the last time I was there, you could barely hear the performer. But the sound mixing this time around was perfect, and made even better by Yorke’s dad-like dancing and the animations glitching his face on the big screen. The only thing that would have made the scene-setting better would have been to remove the ground floor seating, and let the Gen Xers have at it.

The crowd was playing the hardest-ever round of Try Not to Heckle, which is a classic among New Zealand audiences. In every moment of silence between songs, someone took the opportunity to yell something out to Yorke, with a lot of “I love yous” and a few song requests, including “play something eclectic and weird”. I think artists should be allowed to straight up tell their audience to shut up, but Yorke managed to do this without losing his cool: “I’m busy!”

There was the haunting rework of ‘Volk’, the solo debut of ‘All I Need’ and ‘Kid A’, and an acoustic rendition of ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ that made Friday night both a dancehall for the wallflowers, and a moment of catharsis for die-hard fans. It was only Yorke’s second show on the Everything tour, and seemed to reveal a trend: he’d switched up the setlist first performed in Christchurch, swapping out half the set for something new.

I bought a kebab after the show, on a comedown from hearing ‘Everything In Its Right Place’ and ‘Lucky’, and my phone immediately delivered one of my favourite alerts: your bank account is overdrawn. Despite this, I dipped into my savings the next day to go see Yorke again, a decision made first thing on Saturday morning after laying in bed wondering, “but what if he plays …”. Myself and the man next to me on Saturday weren’t the only people who had come back for more – a friend had texted me earlier in the day with the same plan, and also ended up sitting next to someone in the same position.

The tickets left for last minute purchases were views from the gods and “restricted view” seating lower in the stands, and I went for the latter. A restricted view seating ticket at Spark Arena will set you back $85 including GST and fees for breathing inside and whatever add-ons ticket sellers like to charge these days, but it turned out to a full view, better than the seat I was in the night before, which I paid $130 for. So just so you know, a last minute seat isn’t necessarily a guaranteed nosebleed, and it can give you a new perspective to the show.

As hoped, Yorke switched the show up enough for it to feel fresh and just as gripping as the first time around, with ‘Weird Fishes/Arpeggi’ and ‘Sail to the Moon’ as his openers. Anima’s ‘Dawn Chorus’ was played, as were Radiohead deep cuts ‘The Daily Mail’ and ‘Street Spirit’, a performance of ‘Daydreaming’ I tried not to cry during, and one of Yorke’s few feature songs, Unkle’s ‘Rabbit in Your Headlights’. When the songs he played the night before came back around – ‘Packt Like Sardines’, ‘Not the News’ and ‘Volk’ – it was just another opportunity to appreciate the way a song can change when it’s taken from a band’s recording to a soloist’s performance.

It was when he closed his set with ‘Airbag’ that my decision to sink myself $85 further in debt really paid off. The OK Computer opener, about Yorke’s near-death experience in a car crash, is generally not recognised as the most memorable song from that album, nor Radiohead’s discography in general. But Yorke’s amazement at being alive and the picture he paints of being “born again” in a “jackknifed juggernaut” or in an “interstellar burst” had always gripped me, and in that moment, a song saved my life.

I would easily spend another $85 on the off-chance of hearing Yorke play ‘Exit Music’ or ‘How to Disappear Completely’. We don’t know, with Radiohead on an apparent hiatus and having made the bulk of their music when I was a child, when Yorke will come around again. I’d already assumed my dreams of hearing Radiohead live may never come to fruition. That’s why, if you’ve got the means or you’re willing to spare your savings, you should always see your favourite artist as many times as you want.

Maybe to some it comes off as silly stanning, or a bit of frivolous spending in a cost of living crisis, and in the latter case I’d direct you to that Karl Marx quote about your experience of culture informing your personal capital, and the more you save from sparing money on cultural experiences such as the theatre and the like, the less your value of life, and blah, blah, blah. We shouldn’t have to experience art as a one-off, or not at all, on the balance of our finances and time – in an ideal world, we’d all be going to the theatre or a venue, all the time.

Diehard fans have been doing this for decades, from the travelling Deadheads and Phish fans to the cult of Florence and the Machine. Even if it’s the same setlist, you could still go again – personally, I’d see every Eras Tour concert if I had the means. But it’s undeniable that the “what if?” – what if he plays ‘Karma Police’? What if he plays ‘True Love Waits’? – will be the strongest force that brings you back, and generally, it’s more than worth it. Just don’t hope for Yorke to play Creep.