Halloween at Glasgow's cavernous Barrowlands theatre, and there are fiery pumpkins on the amplifiers. In the crowd are several ghouls, a Frankenstein's monster, and hundreds of ordinary-looking people in jeans and T-shirts who consider themselves freaks. When Thom Yorke of Radiohead sings 'I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo, I don't belong here', the crowd moans softly along, creating a ghostly, delayed echo.
'Creep' is Radiohead's anthem, the song that propelled the group from Oxford and obscurity to seven-figure sales in America. But they are only now beginning to emerge from its shadow. Their second album, The Bends, was released to almost unanimous acclaim in March; they have just toured America with R.E.M, prompting Michael Stipe to say that ' Radiohead are so good they scare me'; and their contribution to the Bosnian charity album Help, a new song called 'Lucky', was the one track on the album to capture the sombre terror of the conflict.
'Lucky' has just been released as a charity single, but Radio 1 has refused to play it, as they have with all of Radiohead's singles to date. Why? It's 'unsuitable'; a euphemism for 'too noisy and depressing'. The fact that they receive no daytime radio play has stunted Radiohead's commercial growth in Britain, but has added to their reputation as scowling outsiders; the band too 'real' to be allowed on the Britpop gravy train. The Bends is a harrowing album. In contrast to Pablo Honey, their largely optimistic debut, there are no anthems, no obvious hit singles, but cupfuls of paranoia ('rows of houses all bearing down on me'), nihilism ('this is our new song, just like the last one, a total waste of time'), horror ('shoulders, wrists, knees and back, ground to dust and ash') and morbidity ('I can feel death, can see its beady eyes'). One would have guessed it was syphilis, not success, that had gone to their heads.
On stage, however, Radiohead don't look much like men who have seen the heart of darkness. Singer Thom Yorke is a kind of charismatic nerd, not dissimilar to Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins. Dressed in a lurid orange jacket, his hair dyed scarlet and plastered with gel, his bony face bled of all colour, Yorke looks like a 16-year-old suburban punk " a less strident, more pained Johnny Rotten. His voice is a whine, but it's a whine of distinction: stretching from choirboy falsetto to raw-throated howl.
But the dominant sound is Jonny Greenwood's jagged, abrasive guitar. Buttressed by the more delicate guitar stylings of Ed O'Brien and by occasional crashing chords from Yorke, the group create a dense, stormy brew. Some songs, such as 'My Iron Lung', rely on punishing bursts of pure noise for their dynamics, but at their best, 'The Bends' and 'Street Spirit (Fade Out)', the new songs are genuinely haunting.
What diminishes Radiohead's appeal is the relentlessness of their misery. A two -hour downpour of anger, frustration, heartbreak and despair reaches saturation point well before the end, with Yorke sounding like a suicidal Daily Express leader writer: 'What are we coming to? I just don't know any more.' Ironically, the one moment of spiritual uplift is provided by the inevitable 'Creep'. Yorke's ambivalence towards the song is obvious; he announces it by saying: 'We weren't going to play this. But fuck it, it's a good song.' More than merely a good song, its familiarity actually adds to its resonance, so it works as a sort of hymn to adolescence, an 'Abide With Me' for the post-Cobain generation.
Radiohead play Rock City, Nottingham (0115 941 2544), tonight; Corn Exchange, Cambridge (01223 357851), Mon; Guildhall, Southampton (01703 632601), Tues.