Radiohead Goes Big Band at Cliff Bell’s

Cliff Bell’s Big Band Performs the Music of Radiohead
Cliff Bell’s
2030 Park Ave.
Detroit
Sunday, Aug. 16

Two sold-out shows on a Sunday in downtown Detroit at one of the oldest jazz venues in the city. That’s the value of essentially putting on a pops concert at Cliff Bell’s.

An 18-piece big band brought the music of Radiohead to the tiny Art Deco stage, going as far back as 1995’s The Bends album and playing a wide spectrum of cuts throughout the band’s storied career. It was the vision of self-proclaimed “reedman” Joshua James, who runs the music department at University of Detroit Jesuit.

“If you give us your eager ears, we’ll do our best to delight them,” said James from the stage, explaining to the audience how the night would work. An hour of uninterrupted music with little to no talk in between songs.

It was one of the most adventurous shows I’ve seen at Cliff Bell’s. Like any adventure, there’s a nasty detour or two along the way — but it didn’t mean the trip wasn’t worth it.

There’s moments in the eight-song program where you wonder why all Radiohead songs don’t have a full brass section featured.

“High and Dry,” one of Radiohead’s most affecting ballads, absolutely soared. Oftentimes, the brass section would handle interrupting Thom Yorke’s vocals on a track throughout this program. Here, with help from an arrangement by Bob Washut, all the emotion of the original track is kept and amplified in a new, exciting way. It was a performance that almost brought me to tears, hearing a beloved song in this next context and presented with such care from a talented band of musicians. Even without Yorke’s yearning vocal performance, the emotion of his delivery was well intact.

Other times, the novelty of a big band doing Radiohead was painfully clear. It tested my patience. The context, tempo, and original motifs of some songs were absolutely lost in the swells and overcomplicated arrangements of a song like “There, There,” from Radiohead’s 2003 album Hail To The Thief. It ended up sounding like an orphanage of brass instruments all jumping over one another for attention, hoping to get picked out of the crowd and adopted.

Not leaving space for the original compositions to breathe, or not stretching out the numbers wide enough to welcome improvisation and reinterpretation, was evident on “All I Need,” from 2007’s In Rainbows album. This is from Radiohead’s R&B album; a sparse, bass-heavy album where a single bassline can end up as the entire backbone of a track. That’s the beauty of “All I Need,” but under the weight of accommodating 18 musicians to all play a part in bringing it to life at Cliff Bell’s, the original song collapsed.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Cliff Bell’s Big Band runs this program back in the next year or two — and they absolutely should. It brought a lot of people to Cliff Bell’s who likely hadn’t been before to hear the music of Radiohead in a new way. The majority of it worked. And even if with a few missteps along the way, it’s a welcome addition to the line-up of entertainment at this downtown jazz spot.

The program ended with “Everything In Its Right Place,” which has been interpreted dozens of times through a jazz lens. Brilliantly arranged by James Miley (originally for high school and university marching bands), the song lends itself to being remixed. Throughout the set, Cliff Bell’s Big Band kept the majority of these songs within their original context.

There wasn’t enough play. There wasn’t enough reinterpretation.

Next time, I’d love to see a bit more experimentation with the source material.