An Evening of Radiohead - 2025 Cathedral Tour

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Fri 14 Mar 2025 - Fri 28 Mar 2025

Entering the sacred darkness of Manchester Cathedral on a Friday night, with the city centre lights tinting its east windows, I’d assumed this would be a seated, orchestral performance. I was soon disabused of this misconception.



This was not a Radiohead tribute act but the performers fully tuned into the spirit of Radiohead as they launched into Airbag (from OK Computer, 1997) full throttle, at a thousand feet per second pace.

The band included a string section but in the first section of the show, it was the drums and electric guitar which were the main drivers, so much so that the voice of the singers - Chris Buckle and Lydia Karaviotis - were drowned out. They gradually found a better balance with the full force of the combined instruments, as the evening progressed.

The most magical moments were when the musical/lyrical and the ecclesiastical setting collided and shone a new light on classic songs. This was particularly the case with the refrain of Rain down, from a great height . . . God loves his children in Paranoid Android and the dirge-like Exit Music (for a film), with some of the audience holding mobile phones aloft as if they were candles.

One disadvantage of the setting was that the band, situated below the glinting organ pipes, were not at a much higher level than the audience and many probably used mobile phones so that they could later see the band's faces in full.



After the interval, we were treated to a sequence of songs which made me wish I had refamiliarised myself with the whole of Radiohead’s output before attending the show.

But How to Disappear Completely from Kid A (2000) (I walk through walls, I float down the liffey) was instantly recognisable to me, with the small string section picking up the heartbreaking note which returns throughout the song

We were certainly not short-changed, with the show lasting two and a half hours (with the interval). The twenty-fourth and final song was Fake Plastic Trees. It’s world-weary admission It wears me out was an unlikely spiritual sing-along for us in the congregation, I mean audience.

That audience, packed into the Nave, were a mixture of 1990s veterans such as myself and many who would not have been born when Radiohead released their debut album Pablo Honey in 1993.

The Manchester dates of this UK cathedral tour came as news was breaking in the NME that Radiohead have formed a new legal entity, suggesting they may be planning significant activity in 2025. Maybe, possibly this could mean live dates. But having seen the band in the vastly unsuitable setting of Old Trafford Cricket Ground, in 2008, it’s a sad truth that some bands become too big for their own sophisticated sound.

The enclosed space of Manchester Cathedral was the perfect place to hear their beautiful anguish, even though the band themselves were not there. The crafted chaos of their music, giving way to quieter passages, often in the same song, bounced enchantingly off the pillars and stones.

These Evening of Radiohead concerts have no doubt renewed the fervour of many long-time fans and opened the door to new devotees of their always compelling and often divine creations, spanning four decades and still burning bright.



Manchester Cathedral

An Evening of Radiohead Cathedral tour

Sat, 15 Mar, 19:30
Manchester Cathedral

Fri, 21 Mar, 19:30
Liverpool Cathedral

Sat, 22 Mar, 19:30
Chester Cathedral

Fri, 28 Mar, 19:30
Llandaff Cathedral

For more dates and updates click he.re

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