THE SMILE + JAMES HOLDEN – BRIGHTON CENTRE 18.3.24
As a teenager, Radiohead were the band that got me ‘into’ music, so to speak; the willingness to look further into albums or songs that may be a little eccentric on the outside, but contain many multi-dimensional worlds inside. Albums like ‘Kid A’, ‘OK Computer’ and ‘In Rainbows’ among their tightly-knit discography still remain to be some of my favourite albums of all time and some of the most influential albums in indie music, whether it’s through unique marketing strategies, ecstatic and transcendent live performances, or the multi-voice songwriting of Thom Yorke. It has now been eight years since Radiohead’s last album, ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’, was released, with the band’s five members now redirecting their time to other projects, from bassist Colin Greenwood touring with Nick Cave to guitarist Ed O’Brien and drummer Phil Selway working on new solo projects.
However, the standout project that keeps Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s musical leanings alive is The Smile. The Smile is an art rock and experimental rock project masterminded by Thom and Jonny along with Tom Skinner, drummer and co-founder of now-defunct jazz band Sons of Kemet. The band’s 2022 debut album ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’ saw a heavier emphasis on syncopated rhythms and abstract song-crafting textures that played a role in many a Radiohead project, with many regarding it as a skeletal continuation of the more esoteric moments on ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’. Their 2024 follow-up ‘Wall Of Eyes’ pairs down their multi-coloured experiments into a more concise and cinematic eight-track album, further developing their newly-found voice on tours that have eventually found their way to the Brighton Centre for a sold-out show!
For some Radiohead fans, maybe James’ set will stick out like a sore thumb due to the drastic differences in sound textures between he and The Smile; yet, at the same time, I couldn’t think of anyone better to open! Thom Yorke’s fascination with electronic music and its various means of interpolation welcomes James and his colourful array of sound with open arms for the tour! However, with support artist James Holden and Camilo’s departures, their equipment gets removed from the stage in preparation for The Smile, who arrive onto the stage two minutes early for the opening cut, the title track from ‘Wall Of Eyes’. Thom and Tom Skinner open the show up with respective syncopated acoustic guitar folk-isms and mallet-heavy drum patterns, before Jonny drives in some reverb-heavy bass guitar. Fun fact, I caught Robert Stillman, The Smile’s live saxophone and woodwind player, play a set about five years ago at The Prince Albert supporting Advance Base, involving tape loops and free improvised sax; seeing him now on the Brighton Centre stage with some of my all-time musical heroes is an incredible thing to witness!
‘The Opposite’ kicks things into gear with a groovy rhythm from Tom that acts as a bed for Jonny to add some quintupling delayed guitar riffs. The krautrock flair that seeps through is just a hint of the overall musical inflections that make both albums of The Smile so musically exciting! The band spend a good couple of minutes engaging in a free improvised jam with loose synth arrangements and drum fills, and bowed bass guitar from Jonny before heading into the syncopated ‘A Hairdryer’, a track that sees Thom’s vocals growing more frantic in both dynamics and pitch while Tom grinds through a tight hi-hat rhythm.
As the song peters to a close, the band re-organise their positions with Jonny starting out on a synth for the gospel-like textures that open ‘Speech Bubbles’. On this song, Thom has more room to flex his famous falsetto vocal while Jonny transports himself from synth to harp to piano in just three minutes flat. The song ends on a very free and airy note, akin to something on ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’, drifting through the reverberating spaces of the Brighton Centre stage.
Next, we’re treated to the first of three currently unreleased songs from The Smile: ‘Colours Fly’. There’s an almost menacing low-end drum rhythm from Tom in a 5/4 time signature, disorienting and complex against Jonny’s Egyptian scaling guitar riffs and Thom’s delayed vocals. This track is a strong highlight for Robert as his saxophone builds incredible tension across the song’s walls before the foreboding rhythm brings the song to a close. Thom teases us by saying “This one you might know”, before heading into the trippy groove of ‘Skrting On The Surface’ [sic]. One of many famously “unreleased” Radiohead songs, next to ‘Open The Floodgates’ from the same album, this track closes The Smile’s debut and features some stunning arrangements from the quartet, including some solemn saxophone lines and polyrhythmic delayed guitar riffs. The second unreleased track of the set, ‘Instant Psalm’ is by far, my favourite, and the crowd’s favourite too, of the three, with Thom’s open C guitar tuning and overlapping drones reminding me a lot of Richard Dawson’s work. Despite being more simplistic in rhythm and metric structures, the track still holds an amazingly hypnotic progression that captivates the audience to no end.
‘Waving A White Flag’ remains a somewhat black sheep on ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’ with a stronger focus on electronic soundscapes and arpeggiated synth lines, but is executed in full scope in this live setting. The synthesizers sound cleaner and more tightly-constrained, and gives an eerie ‘Hail To The Thief’ quality to it before Tom’s rhythms evolve into a loose breakbeat groove. The crowd erupts at the introduction of the iconic guitar pattern of ‘Thin Thing’, backed by one of the most complex grooves and vocal patterns in any song by The Smile. The track gives way to an incredible explosion of rhythm and distorted guitar until Thom stumbles slightly, yet graciously closing the song out… there appeared to be a technical issue that led to Thom not hearing Robert, Jonny or Tom!
‘Bodies Laughing’ is the third and final unreleased track the band bless our ears with and features some spooky synth tones and a shuffling downtempo drum groove. The repeated lyrical mantras of “we can’t control it”, and the ascending sax/descending bassline in the song’s rhythmless moments are exciting musical nuggets in this hidden gem in the set! A glorious wave of cheer and appreciation is set upon the band as Thom introduces the opening bass riff to ‘Friend Of A Friend’. This song maintains a heavier emphasis on the jazzier side of The Smile’s musical leanings, with frequently-changing time signatures and ascending piano patterns, not to mention some fantastic tension and discordance from Robert’s sax performances.
‘Read The Room’ is one of my personal favourites off the new album, thanks primarily to a fantastic krautrock-infused polyrhythmic section that takes up the second half of the song. This, of course, follows the song’s slow beat groove and glitching guitar riff that acts as the core components of the first half. The somewhat underrated ‘We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings’ plays at a lightning fast pace and a cinematic array of synth lines and linear grooves. Somewhat ritualistic in vocal repetition, this track is a fun and blazing moment in the setlist that begins to bring the night to the end of the main set. ‘The Smoke’, another personal favourite of mine, features possibly the simplest rhythm Tom has played all night on the kit, while Thom explores variations of a static bassline as the song’s core compositional component. If there’s one thing that this track in particular demonstrates, it’s that after all this time, Thom’s falsetto is still hauntingly beautiful.
The song ‘Under Our Pillows’ is a classic track that explores all the key features of a Smile song, from Tom’s shuffling drum rhythms to Jonny’s delay-heavy guitar riffs. Following a gradual increase to a new tempo via metric modulation, Jonny almost commands Tom’s rhythm to fit his delayed guitar as they head towards a frenzied climax. ‘You Will Never Work In Television Again’ is hands down my favourite song of The Smile, with its muffled yet frantic drum groove in 5/4 time and nonchalant vocal delivery. Lyrically, this track is complex yet dark and sinister while Jonny is almost tearing his bass guitar apart with the pummeling one-note riffs he brings to the table.
Closing out the main set is the mammoth 8-minute epic ‘Bending Hectic’, which opens with some gorgeous waves of cymbals and airy guitar riffs, within which sits a peculiar ascending string note, almost sounding like Jonny’s tuning his string upward beyond belief. Robert’s clarinet performances against the rest of the band, too, are minimalistic, yet stunning as the progression changes into a descending chord pattern. A massive rise in dissonance and noise brings the song to a sludgy final passage that allows Jonny to flex a fantastic guitar solo that proves he’s nowhere near lost his ability to bewilder a crowd with his skills!
The band departed the stage to warm adoration from the crowd who clapped and cheered for an encore… naturally, they obliged. The first of the four encore tracks is a Thom Yorke solo track that has appeared in all four of his main project incarnations (Radiohead, Atoms for Peace, The Smile and his solo work), ‘Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses’. The track’s funky, yet menacing bassline and spooky delayed vocals makes for some incredible jigsaw-falling-into-place moments with this song’s inclusion in the live set. Before heading into the track ‘Teleharmonic’, Thom dedicates the song to their agent, the Brighton-based Charlie who has been behind them since 1991! Thom and Robert introduce some fuzzy synths in the track’s sparse opening before Tom brings in a twisted salsa groove that carries the song through.
Following a quick thank you to Robert Stillman (rightfully so), Thom introduces the chilling 7/8 piano line of ‘Pana-Vision’, famously used in the finale episode of BBC TV series ‘Peaky Blinders’. This song, to me, is the most nocturnal track of The Smile, with what is possibly the strongest vocal performance Thom delivers the entire night, through his vibrato and falsetto ranges. Paring down the night to a calm and soothing exit is the closing track on ‘Wall Of Eyes’ and the final song of the night, ‘You Know Me!’. Jonny builds a wall of cello drones that occasionally flutter in delays and reverberated textures as Tom quietly steps his way across two-beat rhythms on the tom drums. Thom’s heavenly piano passages evoke a feeling of ascending to heaven, despite Jonny’s cello textures creating a discordant aura that almost attempts to pull you back down to Earth.
As Thom, Jonny, Tom and Robert leave the stage for the last time, we exit the venue and head down the stairs, heading towards the waves of conversation between the fans. If there’s anything that Monday night at the Brighton Centre has demonstrated, it’s that if Radiohead never ends up releasing another album or tour together again, The Smile is still an extraordinary body of art from Thom and Jonny and is absolutely worth the experience if you’re lucky to catch them for yourself!
The Smile:
Thom Yorke – guitar, bass, piano, synths, vocals
Jonny Greenwood – guitar, bass, synths, harp, cello
Tom Skinner – drums, backing vocals, synths
Robert Stillman – saxophone, synths, clarinet
The Smile setlist:
‘Wall Of Eyes’ (from 2024 ‘Wall Of Eyes’ album)
‘The Opposite’ (from 2022 ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’ album)
‘A Hairdryer’ (from 2022 ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’ album)
‘Speech Bubbles’ (from 2022 ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’ album)
‘Colours Fly’ (unreleased song)
‘Skrting On The Surface’ (from 2022 ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’ album)
‘Instant Psalm’ (unreleased song)
‘Waving A White Flag’ (from 2022 ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’ album)
‘Thin Thing’ (from 2022 ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’ album)
‘Bodies Laughing’ (unreleased song)
‘Friend Of A Friend’ (from 2024 ‘Wall Of Eyes’ album)
‘Read The Room’ (from 2024 ‘Wall Of Eyes’ album)
‘We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings’ (from 2022 ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’ album)
‘The Smoke’ (from 2022 ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’ album)
‘Under Our Pillows’ (from 2024 ‘Wall Of Eyes’ album)
‘You’ll Never Work In Television Again’ (from 2022 ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’ album)
‘Bending Hectic’ (from 2024 ‘Wall Of Eyes’ album)
(encore)
‘Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses’ (Thom Yorke song)
‘Teleharmonic’ (from 2024 ‘Wall Of Eyes’ album)
‘Pana-Vision’ (from 2022 ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’ album)
‘You Know Me!’ (from 2024 ‘Wall Of Eyes’ album)
Opening for The Smile is electronic artist and DJ James Holden who has been making different shades of IDM, trance and electronic music for the best part of 25 years. With five albums to his name following the release of his 2023 record ‘Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities’, James may be a recognisable name to Thom Yorke fanatics having supported his Atoms for Peace supergroup on their 2013 US tour.
Setting up base in front of The Smile’s distinctive array of instrumentation and equipment, James, along with percussionist Camilo Tirado, treated us to an odyssey of five tracks spanning across different shades of electronic manipulation. The opening ‘Trust Your Feet’ begins with a repeating synth line and some hand percussion loops before various 8-bit synth textures morph themselves across filters and delays. A kick drum begins to intensify in the track with a very cinematic chord progression taking hold in the higher end of the mix with James providing some wordless, electronically-treated vocals. These textures eventually filter themselves down into a cavernous and oceanic sound that transitions into the erratic kick drums of ‘You Can Never Go Back’, which remind me a lot of the title track on Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ (my favourite song of theirs, so this is a huge green flag!). This song plays around with a wide array of sporadic synth tones before a shaker loop comes into play. Camilo eventually brings in some sparse, but solid rhythms on the tabla set up in front of him, shifting the track into a weird fusion of Animal Collective and Aphex Twin.
Some 90s downtempo beats and Mellotron flute samples bring the song to a great climax before the tabla drops out and the flutes remain. The third track, ‘Contains Multitudes’, begins with some disjointed synth samples and a continuation of the downtempo-esque rhythms before some more erratic arpeggios find their way through. The track becomes incredibly dense once the tabla is re-introduced, with tension building its way up via repetition and calamity. Eventually, the synths diminish towards a more flickering sound, paring down towards a more skeletal rhythm for its final moments.
The next song is an absolute treat as James provides us with a cover of ‘Watussi’ by German supergroup Harmonia (formed by Cluster’s Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, and Neu! co-founder Michael Rother). Here, James reinterprets the song into walls of glitching house beats and shuffling synths with the song’s iconic 5/4 synth line taking pride of place at the front of the mix. James and Camilo engage in some fantastic polyrhythmic interplay and some great dynamic control, which can be very easy to ignore if you’re not keeping your awareness on stage. As the synths filter away, James thanks us for our time as he and Camilo prep for the closing track, ‘In The End You’ll Know’. Discordant organs evolve into gorgeous saw-tinged drones with pounding kick and snare 808s pummelling the song into rhythmic fertility. There’s great tension-building throughout the set, but on this song in particular, with some chirping synth tones and various shakers and bell percussion painting the backdrop before the song’s repeating synth arpeggio slows down and gets fatter in texture as the opening organ returns with some glitching phased synths fading the track out.
James Holden:
James Holden – synthesiser, vocal effects, electronics
Camilo Tirado – percussion, tabla
James Holden setlist:
‘Trust Your Feet’ (from 2023 ‘Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities’ album)
‘You Can Never Go Back’ (from 2023 ‘Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities’ album)
‘Contains Multitudes’ (from 2023 ‘Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities’ album)
‘Watussi’ (Harmonia cover)
‘In the End You’ll Know’ (from 2023 ‘Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities’ album)
