The Smile

Lore & Background

The Smile emerged from a natural convergence: Yorke and Greenwood had spent two decades building Radiohead's sound, while Godrich had shaped it from the producer's chair on everything from OK Computer through A Moon Shaped Pool. When the three began writing and playing together outside the Radiohead framework in the early 2020s, the result was immediately recognisable yet fundamentally different. Godrich, long the invisible hand guiding the band's textures, stepped behind a drum kit and became a visible, physical force. Yorke's vocals grew more urgent, less polished. Greenwood's guitar work shed some of its orchestral layering in favour of raw, feedback-drenched riffs and improvised bursts.

Their debut album, A Light for Attracting Attention, arrived in 2022 and was widely received as a statement of intent: a record that felt less like a finished product and more like a live conversation captured on tape. The follow-up, The Smile (2024), deepened the trio's identity, incorporating more electronic textures and longer, more structurally free compositions while retaining the percussive drive that defines their live shows. Critics and fans alike noted a sense of liberation—the absence of a fifth or sixth member, the absence of a producer overseeing the session, meant every choice was immediate and personal.

Live, The Smile is a different creature entirely. Their sets are shorter, louder, and more physically demanding than a typical Radiohead performance. Yorke paces, sways, and occasionally collapses into the crowd's energy. Greenwood's instrument setup sprawls across the stage like a small orchestra. Godrich's drumming provides a motor that never quite settles into a predictable groove. The result is a show that feels less like a concert and more like a controlled demolition.

In Their Own Story

The venue is a converted warehouse in East London. The PA is still humming from the soundcheck when the three of them file in through the back, still in their rehearsal clothes—Yorke in a rumpled white shirt, Greenwood with a case of odd percussion instruments strapped to his back, Godrich carrying a single cymbal like a shield. There's no backing track, no click, no conductor. Godrich sits behind his kit, taps the snare once, twice. Greenwood plugs in a guitar that looks like it was built from spare parts. Yorke steps to the mic, says nothing, and just starts singing a line that sounds like it's been stuck in his head for six months. The first chord is ugly, dissonant, and perfect. The room leans in. For forty minutes, none of them look at the audience. They're not performing. They're arguing, laughing, correcting each other in real time. When the last note rings out and fades into the concrete walls, there's a beat of silence. Then the room detonates. Godrich is already disassembling a cymbal stand. Greenwood is tuning something that has no name. Yorke is wiping his throat with his sleeve, already humming the next song.

Reader's Guide

Think of The Smile as a splinter faction that broke away from Radiohead's collective identity not out of conflict, but out of creative necessity. Their goal is simpler and more immediate: three people in a room, making noise together, with no committee to approve the take.

Key players: Thom Yorke provides the melodic and lyrical spine, his voice a constant through the chaos. Jonny Greenwood is the textural wild card—guitar, piano, keyboards, field recordings, whatever he can grab in the moment. Nigel Godrich, perhaps the most surprising shift, anchors everything rhythmically. His drumming is not a metronome; it's a conversation partner, pushing and pulling against the other two.

Their output diverges from Radiohead in several ways. Production is leaner, often self-directed. The song structures are looser, more prone to extended improvisation. The emotional register skews toward urgency and physicality rather than the cerebral, atmospheric dread that defines much of Radiohead's catalogue. Yet the DNA is unmistakable: Yorke's vocal phrasing, Greenwood's harmonic vocabulary, Godrich's instinct for space and silence.

Their relationship to Radiohead is symbiotic rather than competitive. They are the pressure valve, the place where ideas too raw or too immediate for a five-piece production process can be tested. Fans who love Radiohead's electronic depth often find in The Smile the live, human, slightly dangerous core that those layers were built upon.

Did You Know?

• Nigel Godrich spent roughly two decades as Radiohead's producer before stepping behind a drum kit for The Smile, shifting from the person shaping the sound to the person generating it in real time.
• The Smile's live shows are notably shorter and more physically intense than a typical Radiohead set, often described by attendees as closer to a punk gig in energy and pacing.
• Jonny Greenwood's stage setup for The Smile frequently includes instruments and objects that have no standard name, reflecting his long-standing habit of building custom sound sources for Radiohead.
• The trio has deliberately maintained a separate visual and brand identity from Radiohead, with distinct album artwork, tour aesthetics, and a more stripped-back, almost DIY presentation.