If Radiohead won’t play Las Vegas, at least Thom Yorke will
“Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes” shall soon be unpacked.
Yes, Thom Yorke is coming to Vegas.
Touring in support of his aforementioned second solo album, the Radiohead frontman will make an ultra-rare local appearance.
Here are the top three reasons to be stoked he’s doing so:
It’s likely as close as you’ll get to seeing Radiohead here
What, do they have a problem with Sin City?
Is the omnipresent Vegas sun simply too much for a bunch of pasty British dudes?
Was it something we said?
Look, no one really knows why Radiohead hasn’t played Vegas since the Soup Nazi was getting stingy with the free bread and “The Macarena” was going viral.
No, Yorke doesn’t play any Radiohead tunes on his own.
Instead, he mines his two solo albums and, on his current outing, material from his Atoms for Peace side project with Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, producer Nigel Godrich and others, plus a selection from the recent “Suspiria” soundtrack he penned.
With Radiohead continuing to pass by our fair city for decades now, seeing Yorke on his own just may be our only way of seeing him at all.
To get a break from the X-mas merriment
Sure, it’s the most hap-hap-happiest season of all, even though all those geese our true love gave to us have been hell on the carpet.
But if all those sleigh bells are starting to ring-a-ling-a-ling, a-ding dong ding on your nerves a bit, Yorke’s songbook provides a serious respite from those holly, jolly sounds.
“I’m going to let this party die,” he explains on new tune “I’m a Very Rude Person,” which he’s been debuting on tour, leaving Frosty the Snowman in the corner all bummed, wondering why this world is as cold as the precipitation he’s made of.
Now, there is a palpable beauty in Yorke’s solo repertoire, with his equally sonorous and lilting voice rising up from layers of electronic texture and beats that flutter like a palpitating heart.
These are songs that pulsate and disarm, throb and enrapture, in which Yorke confronts bad feelings and dark places but also the process of triumphing over the two and the thrill of being love’s willing lapdog.
So if all that Christmas caroling is beginning to hit you like a gullet full of Yuletide ipecac, here’s some relief.
It’s time to catch a dance fever
Remember when Thom Yorke danced like no was watching and … everyone watched?
How to describe Yorke’s gyrations, delivered with liquid limbs and eyebrows arched like McDonald’s signage, in Radiohead’s video for “Lotus Flower,” which has racked up more than 54 million views on YouTube since debuting in 2011?
Choose one of the following:
1). Gumby on bath salts.
2). The obligatory drunk dude at the wedding party who guzzled too many free Heinekens before engaging in the equally obligatory chicken dance.
3). A mime portraying a cat ralphing up a hair ball the size of a grapefruit.
While Yorke’s pelvic contortions were easy to parody — cough — they were also enviably uninhibited, a dude getting down and cutting up at once with childlike abandon.
During his solo gigs, Yorke similarly gets loose.
Just how much boogieing does he do?
So much that during Yorke’s recent show in our nation’s capital, Washington Post dance critic Sarah L. Kaufman weighed in with her thoughts on Yorke’s footwork: “You can’t not be moved by his dancing; it is so raw, personal and seemingly spontaneous,” she wrote. “Even if you think it is a bit odd — and you would not be alone — you can also appreciate how swept up in it he becomes. It is distinctly Yorke-ish: subtle, lyrical, emanating from deep wells of feeling.”
Elaine Benes would be proud.
Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.
Preview
Who: Thom Yorke
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: The Chelsea at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd South
Tickets: $45 and up (702-698-7475)
