All Points West '08 Recap: Friday

Radiohead's Thom Yorke / Photo by Shawna Adams

The British Are...Well, They're Already Here
It was a day of well-rounded balance among what the British have to offer as some of their best. The Duke Spirit played early in the day in a set all too short filled with their engaging and slow-building energetic mix of brooding art school angst and '60s sensibilities a la the Velvet Underground and Nico. Lead singer Liela Moss seemed at home center-stage while shaking a tambourine above dense and driving guitars from her band populated by boys.

Recent SPIN cover girl Duffy has unquestionably evolved into everyone's angelic version of Amy Winehouse, and her lightness radiates live as a confirmation. She kept everyone hanging until her finale of the hit song "Mercy," but in the process proved her stage presence by playfully shimmying and softshoeing in time across the entire platform while the audience pretty much followed suit.

A little later the British brought us back to their darker tones with a performance from the multimedia denizens of Underworld, providing quintessential techno sounds from the Trainspotting era. Fans feared they'd be out of their element by performing in broad daylight, but it turned out to be just as easy to drown in the electronic vortex. Ultimately, "Born Slippy" sounds awesome at any time of day, even a CGI-perfect one like Friday.

When the sun set, it was obvious the day revolved around Radiohead's return to the picturesque site they previously played seven years ago, barely a month before the towers fell. In fact, in asking around, there might not be a more fondly remembered two-night stand in the minds of longer-term New York area residents, many of whom were clearly repeat attendees this time around, part of an impenetrable sea of people, a massive religious gathering before Thom Yorke's simply impeccable tenor.

The set was a slow build from regularities to rarities, segueing seamlessly from big hits and In Rainbows songs -- they played almost all of them -- to lesser-performed songs from Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief: "The Gloaming," "Dollars and Cents," and "Pyramid Song." But the nightcap, "Everything In Its Right Place," while gorgeous, rang a bit untrue to older eyes gazing across the water at the still-scarred concrete jungle of Lower Manhattan.

Read Saturday's coverage of All Points West here.
Check out pictures from All Points West.