The band had earned it. Fifteen songs into a 19-song show proved that the members were adept at concocting strange grooves and coloring them with lush keyboards, electronics and noisy guitars.
Not that Yorke, fellow multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood and drummer Tom Skinner needed to prove much in the first place. After all, Yorke and Greenwood come from Radiohead, and Skinner from the dormant avant-garde jazz group Sons of Kemet. The show was not about surprises but rather deepening the appreciation for the myriad projects the members gave us in the past and the one in which they are currently engaged.
And what a project it is. The trio managed to take some of the best aspects of their previous work and turn it into something new, fresh and urgent.
Touring the United States in support of last year’s debut A Light for Attracting Attention, The Smile’s first-ever performance in Cleveland was both workmanlike and exciting. The trio started exactly at 9 p.m. with “Pana-Vision” and didn’t let up for the next 100 minutes. In between, the band, joined by opener Robert Stillman on saxophone on several tunes, played all but one of the songs from its album and a half-dozen new tunes.
The band wasted little time between songs, with Yorke offering minimal banter and pleasantries. Instead, the focus was less on performance and more on creating music in the moment. This was perhaps exemplified best by Yorke beginning the show at an upright piano with his back turned on the audience.
The trio’s equipment was lined up at the front of the stage, but much of it was set up so they could face and interact with each other. Instead, they let bright but sparse panels of lights provide most of the visual stimulation.
It’s hard to quibble with the results, though. Greenwood summoned otherworldly noises from his guitars and basses while Yorke jumped from instrument to instrument and sang in his trademark falsetto. Skinner was a marvel on drums, playing a style equally influenced by jazz, rock and the motorik beat, with the latter meant to summon the feeling of speeding down the Autobahn in Germany.
As a result, there were numerous highlights. The cacophonic opener to “A Hairdryer.” Yorke’s snaky bassline to “The Smoke.” The epic, heavy conclusion to “Bending Hectic.”
After closing the main set with “You Will Never Work in Television Again,” The Smile returned for a four-song encore, closing the show with the weird funk of Yorke’s solo song “Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses.” It took on a new life with the live instrumentation, with the band members appearing to let loose more than they had during the rest of the show. It was a thrilling conclusion to a performance that provided many equally strong moments.
Stillman’s half-hour opening set was a mix of ambient and electronic, with some bursts of free-jazz skronk thrown in for good measure. Still, his performance, while interesting, ended up providing background music for audience members as they talked to each other.
Setlist (courtesy of setlist.fm and my own recollection):
1. Pana-Vision
2. Speech Bubbles
3. The Opposite
4. A Hairdryer
5. Waving a White Flag
6. Under Our Pillows
7. We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings
8. Colours Fly
9. Thin Thing
10. Teleharmonic
11. Skrting on the Surface
12. The Same
13. Read the Room
14. The Smoke
15. You Will Never Work in Television Again
Encore:
16. Open the Floodgates
17. People on Balconies
18. Bending Hectic
19. Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses (Thom Yorke song)
Eric Heisig is a freelance writer in Cleveland. He can be reached at eheisig@gmail.com.
This article appears in Jul 12-25, 2023.