Watch Radiohead Side Project the Smile Play Their First Show

On the eve of Glastonbury’s virtual Live at Worthy Farm livestream festival, organisers announced a surprise headliner in the form of the Smile, a new band consisting of Radiohead members Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, along with drummer Tom Skinner.

The project has now made its live debut as part of the festival, and snippets have begun appearing online. The trio performed eight songs in the course of around half an hour, with Yorke and Greenwood switching between synths, bass, guitar and Rhodes piano.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are called the Smile,” said when introducing the band, who take their name from a Ted Hughes poem. “Not the smile as in ‘ahh!’, more ‘the smile’ as in, the guy who lies to you every day.”

The band have shared two songs from the set online, ‘We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings’ and ‘Thin Thing’. As one might expect, you can hear a lot of Radiohead in both, but there’s a punchiness and immediacy present on the songs, particularly the former.

Watch performances of ‘We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings’ and ‘Thin Thing’ below. It’s not clear at this point when studio versions of these songs may be arriving, though when the band’s formation was announced, it was revealed that producer and frequent Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich was also onboard.