The concert showed hints of topicality in this bitter election year. “The National Anthem,” a song with a bruising bass riff from Radiohead’s 2000 album, “Kid A,” that declares, “Everyone has got the fear,” was laced with sound bites from recent convention coverage. “The Numbers,” a ballad from “A Moon Shaped Pool” with chords that tentatively ascend, only to be pulled back down, insisted, “People have this power,” then warned, “The numbers don’t decide/Your system is a lie,” then drew cheers as Mr. Yorke sang, “We’ll take back what is ours” — as close to optimism as Radiohead gets.

Radiohead has long posed itself what might be called the “Sgt. Pepper” problem: how to perform songs live that were painstakingly (and surreally) constructed in studios. It builds puzzles into its songs — can an odd meter be funky? can dissonance feel like relief? where do physical sounds turn abstract? — and, again and again, solves them. The band is too conscientious to simply strip down its songs, crank up the volume and let fans’ memories fill in the missing atmospherics. Instead, a busy crew reconfigured the band’s instrumentation for each song during the applause.

The five-man Radiohead is touring with an added drummer, Clive Deamer, but with just six musicians and occasional electronic elements, it constantly pulled off textural feats. “Bloom,” a psychedelic tangle of a song from the 2011 album “The King of Limbs” — a ballad, rocker and incantation layered with polyrhythms — swelled to arena scale without losing any of its labyrinthine obsessiveness. Radiohead doesn’t offer unambivalent happy endings; its last of many encores was “Street Spirit (Fade Out),” a minor-key anthem that faces death and oblivion before finally advising, almost as a lament, “Immerse your soul in love.” Radiohead’s deep satisfactions are in pondering, detailing, voicing and facing up to all there is to fear.