I MIGHT BE WRONG - LIVE RECORDINGS

When Kid A and Amnesiac came out, listeners were concerned about how the material from them would sound live, as there were plenty of signs that Radiohead had relied on studio trickery to achieve much of those albums' sound. It was an open question as to whether the band would be able to reproduce those songs live without significant changes to them, and fans were worried that the material would suffer in translation.

As it turns out, they had nothing to worry about, as the band were able to present all the important elements of nearly all the material here from those albums, as attested by this brief but enlightening live recording. Many of these songs actually sound better than their studio counterparts. The only song that differed significantly in arrangement was the electronic composition "Like Spinning Plates", which relied in the studio on backmasking and tape loops. Here it's presented as a stark piano ballad. It's a very different song, but both versions of the song are incredible, and it's unlikely anyone will complain about the song's metamorphosis.

Most of the other songs strongly resemble their studio counterparts, but many of them sound better due to the band's energy as a live act and the superior mastering of this release. Most of the band's studio releases have been subject to the "loudness war", a trend whereby releases are subjected to increasing dynamic range compression in the ongoing pursuit of loudness. Unfortunately, this frequently sucks all the life out of the recording, and in the case of Amnesiac resulted in the material being distorted due to digital clipping (in which the peaks and troughs of waveforms are simply flattened, resulting in a muffled sound). This distortion is almost completely absent from this release; while it's still compressed, it's not as loud as either Kid A or Amnesiac, and has none of the clipping that plagued the latter release.

The other song most dramatically transformed from its studio counterpart here is "Everything in Its Right Place", which is extended by several minutes with a coda that incorporates several processed layers of Yorke's voice. It's a hypnotic effect comparable to what Queen did on A Night at the Opera or what 10cc did on "I'm Not in Love", and it makes an already great composition even greater. The EP closes with the band's legendary song "True Love Waits", which had been débuted live as far back as 1995 and did not appear on a studio album until twenty-one years later. However, the studio version wound up having a radically different arrangement, based largely on electric piano. Here, it's presented as a stark acoustic guitar ballad, and it's just as essential as the studio version.

The only downside to this release is its brevity, but since it's considered an EP, it's difficult to mind much. One does wish that more live material from this era (or from the band in general) were available, because their prowess as a live act is legendary. But then, that's a central tenet of showbiz: Leave them wanting more.