I&E had a high number of songs, yes. But that seemed to be unusual for them, so 21 is not super far off. Someone just posted avg setlist length of tours ... not sure if this thread of another. Sure, they could play a few more songs. They always could.
Let's face it, if they added ASoH back and then added another song, it would probably be Vertigo anyway and people would gripe about THAT.
that's the thing. during rehearsals everyone was saying the encore was too short. I said it was fine. what did they do? add Elevation. I would've preferred the shorter set.
Radiohead play usually 24 songs a night, and they have a lot of longer, moodier songs like U2 do (despite the smaller discography). I compared the Cure the other day on twitter too, but in fairness they counter a lot of the longer pieces (Disintegration, A Forest) with short dumb songs (Why Can't I Be You, A Night Like This) which can easily fill up 30 songs.
Depeche Mode, who literally mail in their live show more than probably any act of their time (same setlist all 10+ shows of the tour so far, and that setlist is
very similar to the last two tours) are even managing 22 songs a night!
if I see a band that's been together 40 years, with 10+ albums play a 21 song show, they better be long as hell songs (see any prog band ever - Rush in particular, who still managed 23 songs every single night of their final ever tour! and there were a few 10+ minute songs in there!!!)
the more this goes on, the more this feels like fulfilling a Live Nation obligation. even if some of the songs (Bad, Ultraviolet, and obviously the JT rarities) are being played incredibly. there's so much untapped potential here...but then again, the 360 and I&E tours had tons of that too. I think Vertigo was largely satisfying for the most part, but even that had its issues, even at the end!
