Radiohead offshoot says it won’t play this SF venue again

Yorke — an Englishman from the town of Wellingborough, more north than London — was bitter cold.

“Somebody left the door open. It’s freezing!” he cracked, dressed in black with a leather jacket. “It’s San Francisco … Jesus.”

By the time the band ripped into its lightning-charged single “You Will Never Work in Television Again,” Yorke had shaken his icy mood.

The Smile braved the elements to make its San Francisco debut Sunday night. Its exceptional performance is perhaps a clue for Radiohead fans to what’s in stock for the hallowed rock band’s future; some might say Radiohead will never return. 

The trio pairs Yorke and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, plus the bombastic-yet-focused drummer Tom Skinner. The project was conceived in the pandemic, born in a surprise set streamed by Glastonbury Festival in May 2021 and culminating in the release of The Smile’s debut album, “A Light for Attracting Attention,” earlier this year.

As the band concludes its inaugural United States tour this week, it capped off a banner year with the release of a live album on Friday that it recorded during this summer’s Montreux Jazz Festival. 

These members of Radiohead haven’t acted so actively or musically charged since they fused electronica with rock and roll together at the dawn of the millennium in “Kid A.” 

If their set at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium was any indication of the future, Yorke and Greenwood are picking up where the last Radiohead album, 2016’s “A Moon Shaped Pool,” left off to push forward and explore the intersection of folk and jazz with the guitar puncturing at the lead.

Robert Stillman, a multidisciplinary saxophonist, opened the night with a solo set. 

Radiohead band members Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood perform in their new band, The Smile, at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, on Sunday, Dec. 18, 2022. (Charles Russo/SFGATE)
Radiohead band members Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood perform in their new band, The Smile, at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, on Sunday, Dec. 18, 2022. (Charles Russo/SFGATE)

Stillman stood at the helm of a switchboard and managed loops of his sax with layers with cryptic beats. At one point, the sonics swirled and piled into a violent crescendo that dissipated into shimmering sounds. It was an apt appetizer for the cold music to come. 

Yorke, Greenwood and Skinner appeared barely a minute past 9 p.m. to begin luring the fans who wore Radiohead T-shirts among the audience away from the past and into the present. 

They opened with the percussion-absent “The Same.” Skinner worked a synthesizer to generate bleeping loops instead of drumming while Greenwood was at the piano. When Yorke approached the microphone, he growled the opening stanza of lyrics instead of using his withering falsetto.

The music is tethered to this peculiar mid-pandemic time period — it’s impossible to see a smile behind a face mask — and Yorke’s lyrics reflect a hopeless bid for humanity. “People in the streets/Please, we all want the same,” he sings in “The Same” like an incantation for 2020. 

Elsewhere, the song “We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings,” with its pulsating chorus, is a reminder for the public that unforeseen forecasts are part of the daily mail, so it’s best to linger in the immediate moment.

Skinner is best known for his percussion in the British jazz group Sons of Kemet, and his inclusion in The Smile is a chance for his new musical partners to stretch his dynamic chops. “The band has always felt like a three-way conversation,” Skinner told Uncut last month, but more accurately, The Smile is a three-way harmony of acutely skilled musicians. 

Draped over his drum set was a black T-shirt with the words “Solidarity with striking workers” in white lettering. When Skinner was in command of his kit, he was militant while keeping his stick loosely gripped. 

Greenwood remains in conversation as one of the greatest living guitarists today. His trusted Telecaster guitar, often seen with Radiohead, was left at home. With The Smile, Greenwood typically has played a Les Paul to allow for fuller and warmer notes. He picked at the guitar with unparalleled dexterity during cuts like “Thin Thing” and “The Opposite.” 

At one point, Greenwood produced a violin bow to saw on his bass strings during the more brooding moments in “A Hairdryer.” By the end of the song, the bow was unwound, with strings popping out like a fishing line slung on a pole. 

While Yorke is predominantly a guitar player, in The Smile, he mans the bass. He went through a variety of models and managed to sing the lead while rooting the songs in complicated bass melodies. Each member of The Smile played more than one instrument — sometimes at the same time. During the gentle “Speech Bubbles,” Greenwood had one hand on the piano with another simultaneously grazing the strings of a harp. 

The band’s album has 13 songs, and The Smile played nearly all of them. (Only the acoustic strummer “Free in the Knowledge” was absent from the set list.) To generate a full set that’s worth a headline, the band introduced the audience to six unreleased songs. 

Yorke presented new songs “People on Balconies” and “Under Our Pillows,” claiming that without these unreleased tracks, “we’d only be here for 45 minutes.”

He began “People on Balconies” by plucking a jazzy riff on his bass that seemed fit for an upright given how he traversed the neck. Just as he was starting to pounce notes in swaggering rhythm, Yorke lost his place and came to a sudden stop.

“I’m not used to playing in the f—king draft,” he smirked. “This is the last time we play this venue again.”

The frontman was likely joking, but it’s not the first time Bay Area weather has dampened his spirit. During the 2013 Treasure Island Music Festival, when Yorke’s project Atoms for Peace was the headliner, he apparently made similar gripes about the frigid conditions.

The seasoned rocker pushed through, and when introducing another unreleased song, “Read the Room,” Yorke was back in it. “This is a nasty one,” he said about the song and began gyrating his shoulders to the prog rock groove. 

The encore concluded with “Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses” from Yorke’s solo catalog. The trio expressed their gratitude, and as they headed backstage, Greenwood and Yorke gave each other a back slap and a hug like musical brothers.