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If you closed your eyes and walked into the Bell Centre blind Monday, you could have guessed you were at a Radiohead show even before the first sign of Thom Yorke’s addictive upper-register murmur. The clues were in what wasn’t there: no bombast, no big entrance — just the uncommonly fragile piano of Daydreaming, then Yorke casting a spell with a chilling, warming embrace. This simply was not music you expect to hear in an arena.

As shafts of mirrorball light pierced the dark and faded back in on themselves, enhancing the slowly unfolding show opener rather than distracting from it, one remembered how Radiohead has made a home for itself in cavernous venues without compromise. For the next two hours and 15 minutes, the English art-rockers owned the room with an unpredictable set that spanned crackling quiet to blistering doom, fractured slabs of sound to celestial choruses, without losing or pandering to their audience.