Although my interest in Radiohead waned alongside my teen angst, the band was hugely important to me for a long time. Thom Yorke seemed to know and be able to articulate my awkward, inexplicable soul pains, and his keening validated my fledgling sense of world weariness. I sank into the complexities of OK Computer, but as a perennially late adopter of cool-music, I missed the tour by a matter of months, and have been feeling the absence ever since - a tangible could-have-been. But no longer - I saw them last night. And even though I dropped away from them after the muted, imprecise Amnesiac, not even bothering to buy Hail to the Thief, on stage, they were absolutely extraordinary. My love affair came flooding back undiminished, after seeing the tragicomic figure of Thom Yorke capering and lurching around the stage, a tiny figure (from where I was, anyway) filling an enormous stadium with his pains and sense of strangeness.

I couldn't speak after the intensity of Idioteque and the maudlin Talk Show Host (which I was desperately hoping they'd play, just for the line 'you want me? fucking well come and find me'), and their new songs - although unfamiliar - translated amazingly well to stage. Radiohead have almost made the transition to electro band, but the best, most human electronic music I've ever heard. It's Thom's voice that demands the attention, backed by the band's ambience and crashing bass swells. His voice is so perfect, perfect not in the sense of being flawless, jewel-like, but in the sense of being beautifully flawed, human, reflecting our aspirations offset by our realities.

The band's career, to me, seems to be a long, tortuous journey into Thom's subconcious. The Kid A/Amnesiac, and to a lesser extent, Hail to the Thief songs placed Thom firmly at the centre, with the other band members relegated to fiddling with electronic boxes, producing huge waves of beat and ambience, through which Thom managed to thread his startling voice. The OK Computer and Bends songs seemed to involve the whole band more, at least visually.

20 minutes in, I was in a trance, and so were the people near me. Utterly, utterly absorbing, a darkness of melody punctuated by small glimpses of light in the guise of joyous little riffs. Now that it's over, I feel a little more complete. That's a tick next to a life goal, right there. (And I'm glad I bought tickets for the first night, avoiding the disappointment of Thom cancelling the second...)