British singer and musician Thom Yorke is beginning his first international solo tour, Everything, with three New Zealand shows before heading onto dates in Australia, Singapore and Japan. His first of two shows at Auckland’s Spark Arena was held last night, October 25. It offered an engrossing mix of sounds that built in harsh and delicate layers to a stunning overall effect, as he chose tracks from more than three decades of music with Radiohead, The Smile and various solo and soundtrack numbers.
It would be a mistake to read into the title of Thom Yorke’s Everything solo tour, which kicked off in New Zealand this week, as offering up some broad, formless retrospective of his pioneering alt-rock catalogue. For an musician of equivalent stature who can pack out stadiums as a solo artist independent of his career-defining band, such a tour could easily consist of a predictable selection of songs from different eras and favourable vocal registers, tied together by some superficial sonic tweaks. But that word “everything” also signals grand ambition – something no one would ever deny the Radiohead frontman.
And last night at Auckland’s Spark Arena, Yorke delivered something that was unified in concept, but often intriguingly and gratifyingly loose in execution..
