This week saw The Smile headline the Montreux Jazz Festival, the side project of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood took the stage at the Swiss festival on Tuesday 12th July 2022. The pair formed the group with Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner last year, Yorke and Greenwood have cited the initial COVD-19 lockdown as the reason for the band’s formation.
A statement on the festival’s website provides a description of the group, “Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood are back in Montreux, close to 20 years after the Radiohead concert at the Festival! Completed by Tom Skinner (the brilliant drummer of Sons of Kemet), the mysterious trio has been making itself known little by little for the past year.”
The band’s appearance at the festival was part of their ongoing European tour in support of their debut album A Light For Attracting Attention. The supergroup’s album was released on 13th May 2022 via XL Recordings and was produced by Nigel Godirch, Radiohead’s long-term producer and collaborator. The album sired six singles, “You Will Never Work In Television Again”, “The Smoke”, “Skirting On The Surface”, “Pana-vision”, “Free In The Knowledge” and “Thin Thing”.
Whilst on their current tour the band have premiered three new songs, “Funeral Of A Friend”, “Colours Fly” and “Bodies Laughing” which was debuted during a show in Berlin last month. A fourth unreleased track was premiered at the Montreux Jazz Festival, the band debuted the grunge rock-inspired track “Bending Hectic” during the set’s encore. The track was so freshly written that Yorke still had the notes by his side, the singer said to the crowd, “I can see the words – that’s good, Cause I just wrote them about half an hour ago. So follow us down the train crash.”
This year marked the Montreux Jazz Festival’s 56th year in action, starting on 1st July 2022 the event consists of over 500 concerts held across 13 stages. The festival concludes on 16th July 2022 with a star-studded line-up, scheduled to play the Auditorium Stravinski are Herbie Hancock and Jamie Cullum. Also set to close the festival are Arlo Parks, Patrick Watson and Phoebe Bridges, all three acts will play Montreux Jazz Lab.
All tickets for our North American Tour are now on sale, including LA & Denver.
Get your tickets here: https://t.co/u9x7d8yMFY pic.twitter.com/VjG5QFzVEh
— The Smile (@thesmiletheband) June 24, 2022
The Smile are next scheduled to appear at the Italian city Macerata with a set at Arena Sferisterio on 17th July 2022. After two more stops on their European tour, the band will return to the UK to perform at this year’s All Points East Festival on 28th August 2022. The band have also announced their first North American tour, the tour is set to take place this Winter and will be in support of their recently released album.
