Watch Radiohead Play “A Wolf At The Door” For The First Time In 6 Years
Radiohead’s 2003 album Hail To The Thief was a record informed by the apocalyptic sense of foreboding and paranoia of the George W. Bush era — feelings that almost seem quaint today. So maybe the entirely new foreboding and paranoia that come with a whole new terrible quasi-illegitimate Republican presidency have led Radiohead to dust off “A Wolf At The Door,” one of the most ominous songs from Hail To The Thief, for the first time since 2012.
Radiohead have a deep catalog and a habit of switching up their setlists from night to night. And lately, they’ve been playing live rarities onstage; at their recent Chicago tour opener, for instance, it was “Blow Out.” Last night, the band played the Schottenstein Center in Columbus, and a heavy, sinuous version of “A Wolf At The Door” was the first song of their second encore. Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood played that song at an acoustic benefit in Italy last year, but this was the first full-band performance of it since a show in Amsterdam six years ago. Check it out below.
If you want to know more about the whole show, ask my Stereogum buddy Chris DeVille. I spent the full weekend with that guy at Chicago’s Pitchfork Music Festival. Yesterday, he drove his family back home to Columbus, and then he went to see Radiohead last night. And he says he’s going to see Snail Mail tonight. That guy is a live-music fool.