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The Story
The Smile began in lockdown, when Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood started trading ideas with Tom Skinner, the London jazz drummer then known for Sons of Kemet. The trio revealed themselves without warning in May 2021, appearing inside Glastonbury's 'Live at Worthy Farm' livestream to play a set of entirely unheard songs — a debut watched by fans who had tuned in expecting nothing of the sort.
Their first album, 'A Light for Attracting Attention' (2022), arrived on XL Recordings, produced by longtime Radiohead collaborator Nigel Godrich. Wiry, angular, and looser-limbed than the day jobs that preceded it, the record drew on krautrock, post-punk, and Greenwood's orchestral writing, and made clear this was a real band rather than a side project marking time.
The pace since has been un-Radiohead-like in the best way: a live album recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival (2022), then two studio albums in a single year — 'Wall of Eyes' in January 2024, produced by Sam Petts-Davies and met with some of the strongest reviews of Yorke and Greenwood's late career, followed by 'Cutouts' that October, drawn largely from the same fertile sessions.
Onstage, expanded by saxophonist Robert Stillman, The Smile toured Europe and North America through 2022-2024, including a March 2024 UK and European run behind 'Wall of Eyes'. With Radiohead returning to arenas in late 2025, The Smile remains the outlet where its two central figures move fastest and loosest.
