CHARLOTTE - The most telling aspect of Radiohead's performance at Verizon Wireless Ampitheatre on Friday was its video backdrop. Five screens stood behind the band on stage, each projecting an exceedingly close-up, largely black-and-white image of one of the group's members as he played.

There was no less focus on RH's sportive bassist Colin Greenwood or elegant jack-of-all-trades Ed O'Brien as there was on iconic vocalist Thom Yorke. More importantly, the video display made it look for all the world like these art-rock vets were jamming out in an intimate, hermetically-sealed studio rather than in front of a crowd of nearly 20,000.

The absence of typical pulled-back, panoramic shots conveying the enormity of an amphitheater crowd and its giddy worship of the artist onstage was exquisitely symbolic of Radiohead's attitudes, aims and place in the arena-rock landscape.

The vast majority of acts making the shed circuit alongside the band this year are either chummy, big-gesturing country stars or fading classic rockers offering a night of nostalgia. Radiohead is rare not only because the band is still a significant totem (arguably the most significant) in the nebulous world of indie-rock, but also because the group remains very purposeful in pushing its artistry forward. Hence the black-and-white close-ups, instant authenticators of a serious (add air quotes as you wish) band honing its craft.

In fact, Radiohead seems to have burned off practically all of the posturing elements that ever linked it to stadium-rock's traditional ideas of showmanship and artifice. You already knew you weren't getting a Springsteen-style fellowship revival, but Yorke also seems to have dropped moody angst and political rhetoric from his agenda as well.

Perhaps the band didn't give the impression of playing strictly for the adoration of its admirers, but the group, including Yorke, seemed supremely comfortable and happy nonetheless, solely focused on presenting and enriching its music, the reason everyone was there in the first place.

Before the evening arrived at that purpose, early entrants were treated to an admirably energetic, varied set from Los Angeles-based art-punks Liars. The most avant-garde of Radiohead's influences (krautrock, Public Image Ltd.) are Liars' bread and butter, and hence the group posited an interesting what-if of how the headliners might have sounded had they more deeply pursued their most extreme tendencies. It may not have been ideally conducive to the lingering rays of early evening sun, but Liars' deeply rhythmic coldness was still quite impressive.

Unsurprisingly, Radiohead's set drew generously from its most recent album, "In Rainbows." Again, this could have been a buzzkill if the band were verging on obsolescence, but the crowd seemed every bit as stoked to hear instant classics like "House of Cards" and "15 Step" as oft-dusted favorites "Airbag" and "Planet Telex." Radiohead performed a number of its signature tunes, including "Paranoid Android," with aplomb and good cheer, but it's evident how little of that antagonistic petulance and epic self-absorption (brilliantly rendered 11 years ago, of course) fits the band today.

By contrast, the "In Rainbows" selections were overwhelmingly fresh and lovely, particularly the intricate, layered "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" and recently unearthed nugget "Nude," which featured wonderfully languid licks from lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. While drummer Phil Selway deserves some kind of medal for his easy ability to transition from arty colorist to physical skin-pounder, Greenwood was the night's most beguiling magician, embellishing the likes of "Optimistic" and "Morning Bell" in a way that gave these eight-year-old songs new life.

The crowd assembled to witness this conjuring was emblematic both of Radiohead's broad appeal (folks from all walks of life enjoy feeling smart, after all), as well as the precarious state of modern rock as a whole. There was a blond Tri-Delt lookalike sitting on one side of me and a pierced-and-inked punk on the other; ten years ago there were likely far more shows on an ampitheatre's annual docket that would appeal to each of these fans separately than there are in 2008, when they shared the same space for an electronic-minded art-rock quintet from Oxford, England.