Atoms for Peace live review

ATOMS IS THE BOMB: At the other extreme of celebrity is Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, whose all-star side project Atoms for Peace opened its mini-tour with the first of two shows at N.Y.’s Roseland. “It’s a side project with unspecified goals,” writes Jon Pareles in the N.Y. Times, “but one effect was immediate: he danced through nearly the whole set. Twitching, strutting, pivoting, hopping, jittering and gesticulating, he let the music propel him in ways that were anything but cerebral, even in songs for which he sat at the piano. Where Radiohead’s music is the triumph of thinking much too hard, Yorke on his own got sweaty and physical.” Pareles notes that his bandmates—bassist Flea, drummer Joey Waronker (Beck), moonlighting producer Nigel Godrich on keys and Mauro Refosco (from David Byrne’s band) on percussion—“easily turned Yorke’s idiosyncratic, odd-meter riffs into funk.” The tour, which hits the Santa Barbara County Bowl on Saturday, April 17, winds up at Coachella. (4/7a)