By Daniel RobertsWhen I was about thirteen I went through a ‘60s phase. I grew my hair and wore a woollen cardigan; I greedily devoured accounts of Jimmy Page riding his motorbike through hotel lobbies and listened to Dark Side of the Moon for hours in the glow of my lava-lamp. And how I wished I could have gone to that crowning event of the hippy era: Woodstock. Not for the acid trips, or the ‘free-love’, you understand, nor perhaps even for the music, but rather for the spirit, that essence of the age that brought so many people together to celebrate music and life. I couldn’t go to Woodstock of course, but there was one place where that spirit seemed to live on, a place of pilgrimage, a music festival with  so much more that devoted punters requested that their ashes be scattered on its site after their deaths. And so experiencing Glastonbury Festival became high on my list of ‘Things To Do Before I Die’.
I ditched the cardigan, but not the fascination, so this spring, just like several hundred-thousand other hopefuls, I awoke at a ridiculously early hour, commandeered two computers and a phone and I emerged as one of the lucky purchasers of a golden ticket to Glastonbury.
With such high expectations it was perhaps inevitable that the festival would be a bit of a disappointment, and so it proved to be. First of all there was the famous Glastonbury weather. Much as festival-goers love to claim that the mud and rain can’t dampen the fun I couldn’t help spending most of the weekend thinking about how much better it would all be if I wasn’t wet, and the loudest cheers of the festival were reserved not for The Who or the Arctic Monkeys but for the rare glimpses of sunshine that tantalised the crowds before giving way again to the deluge. Second, despite the festival’s reputation as a musical Mecca, the line-up this year was decidedly uninspiring. V stalwarts like James Morrison, The Fratellis and The Kooks rendered the Pyramid stage almost devoid of interest, and neither The Killers nor The Arctic Monkeys managed to justify their position on the bill: the former masked their plodding, hollow ‘anthems’ in pompous bombast while the latter were fishes out of water as headliners. Add to this the fact that all the best music was dispensed with over a few hours on the Friday (Bjork, Hot Chip, M.I.A. Trentemoller and Fat Boy Slim – how about that for a clash…), and one can’t help but think the festival could be helped by some more challenging and edgy bookings in the headline slots.
Despite this, there was still much to enjoy. The site was dotted with some fantastic pieces of art: clearly a lot of preparation had gone into the organisation, and the location was unbelievably large: there was always a new area to explore and a delightful surprise round every corner, and given the festival’s stature the joy and pride visible in the performances of many of the newer British bands made for some electrifying concerts.
But ultimately the Stonehenge installation constructed from portaloos by artist Banksy summed up Glasto’s predicament: at first Banksy’s guerrilla graffiti struck a chord with its fresh perspective and challenging themes, but now he sells paintings to Hollywood stars for tens of thousands of pounds. Similarly the popularity of what was formerly a genuinely meaningful and politically charged gathering has proved to be the festival’s downfall. With the masses came homogenisation and now there is just very little magic to be found in the ‘green fields’ at Glasto.
Don’t get me wrong, Glastonbury is anything but a bad festival, and it is by far the best of the major British offerings. The problem for Glastonbury is that in this age of increasing demand for the live music experience the options increase as well, and with some of the alternatives on offer abroad it’s hard not to see why soggy Glasto begins to look less appealing. Benicàssim offers glorious sunshine and a pristine Spanish beach.  Norway’s Hove Festival plays out against a backdrop of stunning mountains and fjords. And Eastern European festivals are becoming an increasingly popular budget option.
One such foreign alternative, and the one that completed my festival summer, is Denmark’s Roskilde. Located thirty miles from Copenhagen the festival arguably has an even richer history than its English counterpart. Founded in 1971 by a couple of high school students this non-profit event was modelled on the peace and love ethos of Woodstock and has a focus on recycling and the environment, plus an eclectic musical smorgasbord showcasing the best talent from Scandinavia and beyond. All in all it was, whisper it, better than Glastonbury.There’s the tantalising way the organisers add a few bands to the line-up every week from March or so, leaving you desperate to see if your favourite band will be one of the announced every Wednesday. There’s the wonderful refund system, under which beer bottles, cans and cups can be exchanged for money, meaning that not only can you buy yourself a meal by going around picking up a few cups, but the festival is noticeably cleaner and tidier into the bargain. There’s the fact that the Main Stage is called the Orange Stage not because it has anything to do with a phone company, but because it’s, well, orange. There’s the train service that goes right from the festival site to the town, or even to Copenhagen, for a pound or two a pop, there’s the swimming lake, the cinema, the naked run (which does exactly what it says on the tin, the prize being tickets to the next years bash). Not only does Roskilde have four days of fantastic music to Glastonbury’s three, but the main event is preceded by a five day ‘warm-up’: you pitch your tent, meet your neighbours, enjoy some smaller bands and generally have an unbelievably good time.
It’s the atmosphere at Roskilde that makes it truly memorable: the audience at the festival is significantly more multicultural and eclectic than its British equivalents. Glastonbury may have its hippy enclave, but in truth the crowds it attracts these days come from a relatively narrow demographic. Our campsite at Roskilde was populated by Swedes, I chatted to Australians in the queue to get in, an Italian called Paolo kept us awake with his broken but noisy English. We were also paid a visit by a dazed looking Norwegian clad in rainbow spandex and flying goggles who introduced himself as Ola and proudly showed all comers how he could almost do the splits, and I discussed the significant merits of The Whitest Boy Alive’s dream pop with a bloke from Leeds dressed as a banana.
The music was great as well: headliners Bjork, Muse, The Who, and Queens of the Stone Age provided familiar thrills, and the festival is the Scandinavian equivalent of Glasto for emerging talent; a host of up and coming Nordic acts gave their all, Datarock, Band Ane, Peter Bjorn And John, 120 Days, Jens Lekman and Mando Diao providing just a few of the more memorable shows.
‘Well’, I hear you say, ‘you clearly only enjoyed it more because of the awful weather at Glastonbury’. Not so. This Roskilde was subject to 95mm of rain, more than double the previous record (they even sell t-shirts emblazoned with the legend ‘Roskilde 2007: I Did All 8 Days’), but it just didn’t seem to matter.
I’d love to give Glasto another try some time, but next year, rather than frantically scrabbling for a golden ticket to Somerset; I will be making my way to a little slice of wet and beery heaven in an unremarkable corner of Denmark.

Conor Doak revisits the subversive films of Swedish director Lukas Moodyson Those who imagine Sweden as a delightful, ABBA-singing land of snow, socialism and smorgasbords will perhaps be surprised to learn that it is the home of one of European cinema’s most melancholic directors. Lukas Moodysson is a hard-hitting realist whose socially-engaged films have confronted a wide range of social issues, from teenage angst and alienation to the commodification of sexuality and the body.His work is well-known in Scandinavia, and he has won a handful of European prizes, but the British distaste for foreign language cinema means he is known here only among a small number of faithful devotees.Moodysson’s international break came in 1998 with Show Me Love, a heart-warming coming-out story of a lesbian teenager growing up in a conservative dead-end Swedish town. The two lead actresses, teenage Alexandra Dahlström and Rebechka Liljeberg, handle their roles with a sensitivity and maturity that belie their lack of experience. The film uses delicately drawn characters and brilliantly understated acting to produce some penetrating insights into teenage psychology. The combination of a low-budget set and simple camera techniques works to produce a sense of hyperrealism that has quickly become the trademark of Moodysson’s work. This hyperrealism obviously draws from the Dogme movement in neighbouring Denmark. Like the Dogme directors, Moodysson rejects cinematic gimmicks, special effects, and nail-biting action sequences. Those who enjoyed slow-burning character dramas such as Scherfig’s Italian for Beginners (2000) will love Moodysson. However, at least in these early films, Moodysson distances himself from the more experimental techniques of the movement: don’t expect shaky cameras or grainy video in his work.  Together (2000) is a delightfully wacky film that is part uplifting Romantic comedy, part engaging social critique. Elisabeth (Lisa Lindgren), a middle-class suburban wife and mother walks away from her husband and failing marriage. Lacking a place to live, she finds herself and her children staying with her brother Göran (Gustav Hammersten), who resides in a hippy commune. It’s the Sweden of the ‘70s, and much of the comedy derives from the tensions between the staid middle-class values of Elisabeth and the muesli-eating, Trotsky-reading, free-loving world in which she finds herself.  Although at times nostalgic about the ideas behind communal living, Moodysson is careful not to romanticise the sometimes harsh realities of the lifestyle. The film is particularly successful in exploring the difficulties that arise when trying to turn the idealistic philosophies of the hippy movement into lived realities: one character struggles to reconcile his ideological view of free love with his personal longing for his partner to remain monogamous. These juxtapositions are dealt with subtlety and sensitivity, and Moodysson refrains from any easy judgements about his subjects.His more recent films are more overtly critical of mainstream society. Lilya 4-ever (2002) is a harrowing look at the problem of people-trafficking. In some forgotten corner of Eastern Europe, the teenage Lilya (Oksana Akinshina) is abandoned by her parents and forced to live a harsh life on the streets. Despite striking up a close sisterly friendship with the streetwise-but-innocent urchin Volodya (Artyom Bogucharksy), Lilya is enticed to leave her country with the promise of a supposedly better life in the West.  On arrival in Sweden, Lilya discovers that she has been the victim of an international scam and is forced to work as a prostitute. The scenes of sexual violence, although not particularly explicit, are distressing and will remain with you for days after watching the film. This is a much tougher, more unrelenting film than his previous two features, and its hard-hitting, didactic message and quasi-documentary style places it more in the tradition of overtly political films – think Ken Loach –than the experimental Dogme movement.  Moodysson’s political and religious views now begin to emerge more clearly. In interviews, he claims that the anti-capitalist riots  of 2001 in Gothenburg strengthened his resolve to be a political film-maker. He is both a committed leftist and a practising Christian and both of these beliefs clearly inform Lilya 4-ever. The film suggests that there is more humanity and freedom among the street-children living in the abandoned factories than the leafy middle-class suburbs of Malmö.  One’s own experiences and political views will likely determine how convincing that seems. Most, however, will probably find the mystical conclusion – where Volodya is transfigured into a Christ figure complete with angel wings – too much to stomach. The problem is not the idea of a Christ figure itself so much as the incongruity of celestial angels suddenly appearing in a film otherwise characterised by stark and brutal realism.Moodysson remains political in his two most recent offerings, but he has veered heavily towards experimental techniques.  Undoubtedly, this has disappointed a large part of his traditional audience. Don’t watch Hole in my Heart (2004) with your Mum: it’s a gory, grotesque and plotless examination of the internet porn industry. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a copy of Container (2006) anywhere, a stream-of-consciousness narrative that covers Moodysson’s same themes of alienation, exploitation and social and sexual conformity. Both films have excited the art-house critics immensely, and it’s true that they have moments of brilliance, particularly in their some innovative use of montage and camera technique. However, I found they lacked some of the subtlety of Moodysson’s earlier work with their over-reliance on graphic shock value.It will be interesting to see whether Moodysson returns to a more mainstream style in Mammoth (currently in pre-production for 2009 release). Both his decision to shoot the movie in English, and to cast the popular Gael Garcia Bernal as the lead male, suggest a return to a more accessible format. If Mammoth is executed with the same skill and finesse as his earliest work, this film could open up the British and American market for Moodysson and make him into a household name. Watch this space.

By Robin Whelan Shoegaze is one of those terms which evolve intriguingly past their intended meaning. Originally coined to describe the less-than-gripping stage presence of a group of late ‘80s/early ‘90s indie bands like My Bloody Valentine, the Cocteau Twins and the Jesus and Mary Chain, it has now come to denote the sound of these performers rather than just their somnambulant performances. “Shoegaze” as a genre would be far better termed “stargaze”, lumping together as it does bands that produce epic soundscapes: music that twinkles and shimmers, clipped hooks, vocals buried deep in the mix.The mood is important above all else. In that regard, witness anything from My Bloody Valentine’s seminal Loveless. Voted best album of the 1990s by influential American indie site Pitchfork, Loveless is somewhat akin to a drunken stumble through a winter wonderland, or listening to radio static underwater. Each track is coated with a disorienting level of reverb and bandleader Kevin Shields uses his tremolo arm to dizzying, confusing, effect, This is music without shape or form.Few shoegaze bands were as “leftfield” as MBV (there again, how many have ever been?), although the Jesus and Mary Chain did approach their levels of oddness with some of their live feedback workouts. All the same, this was hardly a formula for mega-stardom. Insufficiently catchy to be indie-rock, lacking the chops for prog and just interesting enough to avoid that horrible coffee-table label, “chillout”, here they reside, doomed to a career of commercial failure and cult status.Still, that cult has bred latter-day success for many of the original ‘gazers: MBV leader Kevin Shields has collaborated with The Go! Team, and The Jesus and Mary Chain have recently reformed to no little acclaim (headlining the Coachella Festival accompanied by Scarlett Johansson). Rumours are that My Bloody Valentine themselves will reform soon and cash in.Now, bands like Secret Machines, M83 and Engineers have taken up the shoegaze mantle, while moving in different directions. Secret Machines marry shoegaze to Dark Side of the Moon-like prog and thumping drums; Engineers have the blurry feedback down pat, but harness it to create indie ballads; Anthony Gonzalez of M83, meanwhile, augments the beauty of shoegaze textures with bombastic synth workouts reminiscent of Vangelis. Thankfully, the nu-gazers tend to spend more time staring at the audience than at their tatty Converse.

RUGBY is rarely light-hearted, particularly when previous battles are fresh in the memory. Disappointingly for Teddy Hall, Keble reasserted last year’s dominance, eventually winning comfortably over their rivals on a grim afternoon in the Parks. Ultimately, cries of “keep scrapping” were the only realistic calls of encouragement in a game that was not a great advertisement for rugby before the World Cup Final.
Hall could not find a response to Keble who played with the kind of determination and flair that won them both the cuppers and league titles last year.
As a result of the soggy conditions, neither side was able to gain momentum early on, with both teams resorting to England’s tactic of converting penalties in order to get points on the board. Teddy Hall had the first try scoring opportunity, attacking with a pace reminiscent of last season’s Sevens success before eventually squandering their overlap by conceding a penalty.
This was one of the few moments of fluency in the first half, with both teams preferring to kick in order to minimise handling errors.  Some of the kicks were individual to say the least, backs and forwards alike attempting to punt the ball into the opposing half, with many achieving unusual flight paths to get to their destination.
The second-half signalled a turning point in the game, with Keble realising the advantage inherent in the weight of their pack. Missing two of their front row, Teddy Hall’s resolve was no match for the size and brute force of Keble’s forwards, who came to life after the break.
Spearheaded by Bob Pittan, whose game is reminiscent of the colossal bruisers of the 1970s,  it is difficult to envisage a stronger unit on the college circuit. Pittan is bearded and frightening, assuming an aura comparable to that of the iconic Frenchman Sebastien Chabal.
Like a hippo, the Keble stalwart relished the wet conditions, loitering at the back of the lineout, before devouring any loose ball. Fortunately for Hall, the uncontested scrums prevented their opponents from asserting their physical dominance in this area as well. It is difficult to see how the home side’s makeshift pack would have won much of their own put in.
Pittan was also instrumental in Keble’s first try, characteristically driving up the centre of the field with his comrades, until reaching their target under the posts.
 For the second week running, the victors were then gifted the opportunity to play against fewer players, when Hall lost a man to the sin bin midway through the second half. This was one of a series of occasions when the referee had to call upon his whistle, with both sides being found guilty of handling errors and indiscipline. Buoyed by this advantage, Keble then assumed dominion over their opponents, grasping every opportunity to run at Teddy Hall’s stoic defence.
The score masks the fact that Teddy Hall competed for the vast majority of the game, scoring first early on in the second half. Nor was the game a true reflection of things to come, with both sides missing key players to university commitments.
Hall’s quest for a first win of the season continues away at Catz on Saturday lunchtime, before Tuesday’s visit to a St. Peter’s side which is again staring relegation in the face.
Keble, though, can enjoy the week ahead with the satisfaction of having defeated their rivals once again. Onlookers were surprised not to hear the habitual cry of “Hall” down the tunnel from the Teddies, whose players recognise that they will henceforth have to find more meaningful ways of humiliating their opponents.

BALLIOL may be relative newcomers to the upper levels of college football, but their start last week against Christ Church indicated that they had the talent to survive at this level. Their first home game, against a struggling Exeter side, provided the perfect opportunity to reinforce these credentials.
As the home side dominated the early exchanges, Exeter’s only chances came from Spencer Crawley’s terrific long throws which posed a constant threat, particularly as giant centre-back Ben Fox came forward to get on the end of a number of them. Crawley and Fox aside, the main tactic of the away side was to use striker Billy Bowring as a target man. This policy worked to a degree but Bowring, a lanky forward, had a predictably lumbering first touch and often miscontrolled the ball.
With neither side fully getting into their stride the first goal of the game was a surprise when it came, Ted Maxwell controlling a pass on his chest thirty yards out before launching a dipping volley past the keeper.  It was a rare moment of excellence in what was a scrappy first quarter.
The goal did little to change the pattern of play with the patchy football punctuated by the odd moment of excitement such as an excellent long range effort from Spencer Crawley and a dangerous foot high challenge from Joe Haley which put ‘hard man’  Paul Sagar to the ground.  Although Haley’s tackle deserved the booking he received, Sagar’s ludicrous theatrics on the ground afterwards were a gross over-reaction given no actual contact was made between the midfielder’s boot and his face.
It was with ten minutes to go in the first half that the game finally started to spark when Maxwell had his shirt tugged in the box and lightening quick wing Rory Campbell hammered home the spot kick. The goal did little to spark a disjointed Exeter side, but they found themselves a lifeline before the interval when Aamir Saifuddin’s speculative long range effort caught everyone off guard, including Balliol keeper Devine. As a scoreline, 2-1 probably was a fair reflection given Exeter had defended stoutly, even if they hadn’t offered much in attack.
Balliol started the second half the stronger and were unlucky not to score when they saw the ball get halfway across the goal line before being clawed back by the Exeter keeper and again when a Rory Campbell corner was headed off the line by Charlie Hill.
Perhaps feeling the game was turning in their favour Exeter finally made some progress up field, with Bowring, Hill and Crawley all having efforts on goal turned away by the excellent Chris Devine.
With time running out Exeter were leaving bigger and bigger holes at the back which were always likely to be exploited by the pacy Balliol attack.  Blues athlete Rory Campbell tore through a tiring defence to slot the ball past the keeper before Maxwell was bought down by a last ditch tackle to give Campbell the chance of a penalty to seal his hat trick.  He stood up to the challenge, slotting the spot kick into the bottom corner to put the result beyond doubt.

WORCESTER showed their class today against a New side who looked throughout as though they were chasing their title rivals. The reigning champions must surely be the favourites for the league now, having dispatched their main opposition with such ease, and relishing prospect of a season filled with games such as this.
The match began with some very scrappy exchanges. Neither side could find a way to dominate possession and as a result the watching crowd had to wait until the 11th minute for the first real attempt at goal – a speculative New effort which was comfortably over the bar.
As the game went on though, Worcester began to gain the upper hand in the midfield battle. Blues player Lucian Weston once again proved his class: his distribution was excellent as he repeatedly picked out the runs of his forwards. As a result, his side began to hold onto the ball and could build attacks.
Their first goal came on the half-hour mark, with the ball finding its way to Kunal Desai who wasted no time in firing a shot across the keeper and into the bottom left of the New goal. Worcester support grew louder from the sideline as spectators could see they were now firmly on top.
Things went from bad to worse for New when, after ten minutes of almost constant attack, Worcester broke through again. Dominant left back Tim Squires made one of his trademark surging runs into the opposition half, and when New goalkeeper Sam Evans couldn’t hold on to his stinging shot, Kunal Desai was on hand to nod in his second goal.
At this point, with only five minutes left in the half, Worcester launched an all out display of fantastically free-flowing one-touch football to the delight of the thirty or so fans on the touchline. That they didn’t manage to score again in this period was more due to their own misfortune than any particular skill amongst the New defenders.
New may have hoped for a change of luck in the second half, but Worcester didn’t let up, carrying on from where they left off and playing some very attractive football. It took just five minutes for Desai to secure his hat-trick, receiving the ball from outstanding left winger Danny Plaxton and deftly chipping it over the onrushing goalkeeper to find the back of the net.
With the game effectively finished as a contest, New managed to take advantage of Worcester easing up to win two penalties in the space of two minutes, only managing to convert the second.
However, it was too little too late and the New players were all too aware of this. By the time Worcester managed to steal a scrappy goal with fifteen minutes left on the clock, both sides had accepted the result was secure.
The Worcester players were obviously delighted with their victory against a side that had been touted as rivals for the title, and will be hoping to maintain their 100% record next week. For New it seems to be a matter of reassessing their aspirations, with left winger James Sutton stating “We’re not title contenders, we’re just hoping to play Premier Division football next year.”
While it is premature to talk of relegation, they will certainly have to improve to maintain respectability in this division.

AFTER their defeat of traditional heavyweights St. Peter’s last week, Magdalen were reminded of how difficult achieving Division One survival will be for them by a Catz side who ran in four tries despite conditions that didn’t allow for much running rugby.

Thanks to the previous week’s heavy rain this was the visitors’ first game of the season, and it was debutant Matt Perrins who stole the show, grounding two scores and putting in an impressive performance on the right wing.

The result could have been much closer but for the boot of Magdalen outside-half Andy Barnes, who missed four penalty efforts at goal and over-shot the dead-ball line with kicks from hand on a number of occasions. The Catz back three were also, for the most part, able to deal with the huge up-and-unders that Barnes continued to launch into their half.

With rain pouring down throughout it was bound to be a forward’s game, and it was St. Catherine’s who were able to dominate the early exchanges, driving back the home side’s scrum and forcing error after error. Catz weren’t able to turn territory into tries, however, and a panicky first fifteen minutes saw them commit as many mistakes as Magdalen.

The deadlock was broken on twenty minutes, however, as Catz captain Sam Donaldson’s kick over the top was not dealt with, and the ball was shipped wide to Perrins who touched down under pressure in the corner.

Despite the score going unconverted, Catz were now full of confidence, and it wasn’t long before their lead was extended. A five metre lineout was well claimed, and the visiting pack drove over for prop Nick Hargrave to claim his first try for the college. Another conversion miss followed, and the first period petered out with both sides unable to make anything happen in the midfield.

Magdalen, with the slope behind them, began the second half the brighter, with their scrum seemingly invigorated by substitutions. The Catz defence held firm, however, with forwards and backs alike putting in brave hits. Barnes had chances to close the gap with his boot, but penalty after penalty sailed wide of the posts.

The Manor Road outfit were rewarded for their defence as Magdalen tired, Donaldson taking advantage of a Peter Jones charge down to score under the posts before Perrins capped off a lovely move to finish with aplomb in the corner, sealing a well-earned win.

By Carl Cullinane 
*****At an impromptu Trade Justice Movement gig in 2005 local musician Thom Yorke sang “Gimme fair price, gimme fair price” during a new song called ‘Reckoner’. That line, along with almost everything else from that version, is gone. But the sentiment has been transposed from political commentary to a concept at the centre of an album release that has sent shockwaves through the music industry. While the voluntary donation method of exchange is not new, Radiohead have surely created the biggest honesty box ever seen. After 10 days of industry self-flagellation and debate on the value of music, could the album handle the expectation once download codes for In Rainbows had rained down on our inboxes?

The answer has been a glorious affirmative. In Rainbows has the swagger of a band sure of both their vision and their identity. The band’s last album, Hail to the Thief, was considered by many to be a half-baked disappointment that lacked the cohesiveness of their best work. Contrastingly, In Rainbows has been a tortuous 3 year labour-of-love and with the crucial return of Jonny Greenwood’s gorgeous string arrangements, a disparate set of songs has become a confident organic whole. Prefigured by the title, the music is prettier than anything Radiohead have ever done. But while freed of Yorke’s recent clunky political pronouncements, the lyrics are as darkly personal as ever, exploring themes of relationship breakdown and personal frustration.

Opener ‘15 Step’ brings the funk, and a playfulness characterised by the punctuation of exuberant children’s shouts. It’s difficult not to smile, and with that the battle is half won. The spectral orchestrated intro of ‘Nude’ paves the way for a sparse arrangement of building, aching beauty allied to lyrics of unrelenting bleakness; “Just when you’ve found it, it’s gone”. ‘Arpeggi’ soars from a humble finger-picked opening, before a vintage Colin Greenwood bassline takes it somewhere else entirely. But it is with the immense heart-exploding climax of ‘All I Need’ that the album places itself definitively towards the sweet end of bittersweet.

After the baroque Beatlesy ‘Faust Arp’, the aforementioned ‘Reckoner’ is an album highlight. Stunningly gorgeous, it features Liars-esque multi-tracked vocals over a simple repetitive melody,  culminating in a stately string-drenched finale. Only the closer ‘Videotape’ falls short of the skyscraping beauty of its live incarnation, while still offering their most heartbreaking lyric since Pyramid Song.

In an album of strange beauty, ‘House of Cards’ provides the most incongruous moment: Yorke, swathed in reverb, purring “I don’t wanna be your friend, I just wanna be your lover” over a laid-back reggae groove. It’s the sexiest song they’ve written. This embodies the shift at the heart of In Rainbows: innovation as a subjective rather than objective concept. Radiohead continue to push themselves forward, to places we never thought we would see them go.

A UNIVERSITY error severely delaying loan payments has stranded hundreds of students without the financial means to pay battels and basic living costs.
Undergraduates have been forced to loan each other money, and some have reported charges of up to £4000 on their termly battels after colleges included University tuition fees with charges for rent.
Around 1200 students were affected, with over £5.2 million in loan payments delayed.
JCR Presidents are to hold a meeting today in an attempt to force the University to correct the error before more students hit serious financial trouble.
The problem, caused by the University’s new online registration system, has prevented money from the Student Loans Company reaching students.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the Oxford Student Information Centre (OSIC) charged with running the registration scheme admitted responsibility for the fault.
“One of the daily file uploads to the SLC that confirms student attendance had a problem. To remedy this the Central Administration section reconfirmed all enrolled SLC students to the SLC.”
OSIC claimed that payments for the approximately 300 students affected took three to five working days to process, although many students have disputed this.
Pembroke JCR President Chris Bennetts said, “The online registration process was supposed to make things easier, but for many students this year it has had the opposite effect. Students live on tight budgets and many cannot afford to wait for errors to be corrected.
“Despite completing the online registration in plenty of time for the new academic year, loan payments were not made.”
Martha Rowsell, a second-year language student at Brasenose, registered in time but still experienced weeks of delays before receiving her first payment on Tuesday.
“It’s outrageous that the loans have taken so long to come through,” she said. “It’s not so bad for students who can rely on support from their parents, but for those who can’t it’s been really hard.”
The University has refused to accept total responsibility for the delays, claiming they occurred nationally as a result of “heavy traffic loads on the SLC portal by universities confirming attendance”.
In a second blunder, around 900 other students face an even longer wait after failing to register on time.
“It took ages for all the relevant information to come through,” said one third-year St Anne’s student who wished to remain anonymous. “When I was finally able to enter my password and user name in late September, I was told the site was not yet operational. I think the whole process should be made less cumbersome.”
User names for the new system were sent to students’ contact addresses by their colleges, but passwords emailed from OSIC did not reach some respondents as University email accounts filtered them as junk mail.
OSIC said that of those who did not successfully register, 90 per cent of queries were dealt with within 48 hours.
The Student Loans Company, however, has indicated that late registrations could take up to six weeks to process, leaving students to rely on bank overdrafts or borrowing from friends when overdrafts have already reached maximum limits.
College bursaries were keen to stress their sympathy for students suffering financial difficulties. Mansfield has removed penalties on late battels payments while Pembroke offered some students short-term loans to cover rent.
Brasenose’s Bursar John Knowland said, “We will allow late payment when there is a genuine reason for being unable to pay on time, including the late arrival of money from the Student Loan Company.”
In reference to those students whose battels unexpectedly included tuition fees he added, “The College does not charge students the fees which it is obliged to pass to the University, if it has received confirmation from the Student Loan Company that those fees will be paid by the Student Loan Company.” By Michael Sweeney