In 1997, Radiohead’s bassist Colin Greenwood was asked about Pink Floyd, a band whose name kept being mentioned in relation to their then-new album OK Computer. His younger brother Jonny was a fan, he said, and had made the band watch the 1972 film Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii. “Dave Gilmour sitting on his arse playing guitar, and Roger Waters, with long, greasy hair, sandals and dusty flares, staggers over and picks up this big beater and whacks this gong,” he protested. “Ridiculous.”
It’s a quote that comes to mind while watching the live stream of the second gig by the Smile, the latest project from Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke – an album’s worth of material performed in the round before an audience, the band’s three members in a kind of circular cage made of LED strip lights – and considering what the difference is between the music they’re making and that of Radiohead. The most obvious point of departure is that the drum stool is occupied by Tom Skinner, of acclaimed London jazz band Sons of Kemet, whose presence noticeably alters the band’s rhythmic flow. He’s perfectly willing to play a pounding Neu!-inspired Motorik beat on We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings, but more often you notice the stuff that divulges his jazz chops: the suppleness and slipperiness about his playing, the emphases that don’t always appear where your rock-trained ears expect them. Equally, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that, in the Smile, Greenwood and Yorke are allowing their prog rock tendencies full rein, unencumbered by band mates’ grumbling about sandals and flares. Greenwood’s guitar riffs are complex and knotty – there’s a particularly fantastic, percussive example driving Thin Thing – the time signatures are frequently lurching and awkward, the songs’ structures are uniformly episodic. “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus,” sings Yorke on Open the Floodgates, presumably in character as the kind of unconscionable simpleton who requires such artless baubles: there certainly aren’t any choruses here.
