Five stars for The Smile at the Roundhouse — Radiohead offshoot deliver energy and innovation

Few bands last as long as Radiohead have. Those that do find themselves slowing down with age. Getting the members together becomes an operational feat involving schedule synchronisation and luxury-property hire. New songs require compromise between the different musical interests that bandmates have developed in middle age. The days of bashing out a future classic in a Transit van while heading to a gig in Hull lie in the faraway past.

Radiohead’s last studio album was A Moon Shaped Pool, which appeared in 2016. Its quality showed that the quintet, who formed as Oxfordshire schoolfriends in 1985, had not succumbed to the autopilot mode of other famous bands with long histories. But the absence of any new material since then also demonstrates the difficulty of maintaining the creative energy of earlier, hungrier days. So where does that energy go instead?

At the Roundhouse, for the second of two shows, the answer came in the form of The Smile. This trio includes Radiohead’s singer Thom Yorke and their lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. They are joined by an emissary from the raucous jazz scene that has taken root in London over the past decade: Tom Skinner, drummer with the band Sons of Kemet.

Their tour is in support of their debut album, A Light for Attracting Attention. Arranged in a row at the Roundhouse, with Yorke and Skinner flanking Greenwood in the middle, they played its tracks in album order. The music had a strong Radiohead character, drawn in fast, nimble strokes as though freed from the unwieldy structures of a big rock band.

Skinner’s drumming set the tone. He played with a supple touch and dynamic variation, never forcing the pace or trying to be too loud. Greenwood shadowed his percussive patterns with equally lithe rhythmic riffs, interspersed by brief incandescent moments of soloing. A highly expressive rock guitarist, he has been a stranger to the instrument lately while concentrating on film scores and modern classical pieces. Here he returned to it with renewed vigour, standing with a mop of black hair falling over his lowered face, intent on wringing every possibility from its six strings.

“You Will Never Work in Television Again” was a punk-rock blast. “Free in the Knowledge” went from Neil Young-style acoustic balladry into a heightened ambient shimmer, with Greenwood doing the old Jimmy Page trick of bowing his guitar. He also played piano, synthesisers and at one point a harp, while Yorke moved between keyboards and guitars, including bass. The singer was in fine voice, draping his tender, sorrowful croon over songs, with astringent hints of a sharper tongue, too.

Lyrics addressed themes of climate change, authoritarianism, political deceit and showbiz complicity. “We don’t know what tomorrow brings,” Yorke chorused at one point. The Smile’s twisty, groove-filled songs convey an alive sense of engagement with present turbulent times. The debuting of several unreleased tracks in the setlist, and Yorke’s description of the album as their “first”, suggested that they are only getting started with their work. This Radiohead offshoot has tapped into a powerful wellspring of musicianship.

★★★★★

thesmiletheband.com