You go to concerts to have an experience and to be immersed in the music. The Radiohead show on Saturday night at Malahide Castle was great, but a few things conspired to not make it completely brilliant: sunlight, screens and sound.

This would have been a completely different gig had Radiohead hit the stage at 10PM in darkness. The lighting was lost in the daylight and it didn’t help that the screens to the left and the right of the stage weren’t working well and were shut down halfway through the show.

The sound mix was fab and crystal clear, but when you can hear the conversations going on around you, the music just isn’t loud enough. I want to feel the music ripple through my body, as well as hear it.

The setlist was solid. 15 Step was the perfect opener, and as expected, the boys played every track but one from In Rainbows. Slower numbers like Pyramid Song stood out and the first set closed strong with There There. For me, both encores were easily the best part of show, and it was getting darker outside. Lots of highlights, from Exit Music (For A Film) to rockers like Planet Telex, a memorable version of You and Whose Army?, and finishing appropriately with Idioteque.

Full setlist:

15 Step (In Rainbows)
Bodysnatchers (In Rainbows)
Airbag (OK Computer)
Bangers ‘n’ Mash
Nude (In Rainbows)
Pyramid Song (Amnesiac)
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi (In Rainbows)
The Gloaming (Hail to the Thief)
The National Anthem (Kid A)
Faust Arp (In Rainbows)
Videotape (In Rainbows)
Optimistic (Kid A)
Where I End and You Begin (Hail to the Thief)
Reckoner (In Rainbows)
Everything in its Right Place (Kid A)
All I Need (In Rainbows)
There There (Hail to the Thief)
-encore-
Exit Music (Ok Computer)
Jigsaw Falling Into Place (In Rainbows)
Climbing Up The Walls (OK Computer)
Planet Telex (The Bends)
How to Disappear Completely (Kid A)
-encore-
Super Collider (new)
You and Whose Army? (Amnesiac)
Idioteque (Kid A)

I expected a great show from Radiohead and they delivered despite a few not so perfect conditions. Gabe took about 50 minutes of postage-stamp size video (which I’ll get up at some point) and all the pictures including the one here.