The Smile play NPR's Tiny Desk

NPR Music has published The Smile's Tiny Desk Concert, just under 15 minutes at Bob Boilen's desk in Washington with three songs from A Light for Attracting Attention. Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and the drummer Tom Skinner are joined by Robert Stillman on saxophone.

The session was filmed in November, while the band were on their North American tour, and it comes a month after their live album The Smile At Montreux Jazz Festival, July 2022. They arrived early and spent about an hour and a half trying songs at the desk, looking for what would work without the volume and effects of the record, and settled on four.

Yorke opens “Pana-vision” quietly at the piano and is handed a guitar at the end of it, yet by “The Smoke” he is playing bass and Greenwood's bass has become a guitar. The song they recorded in between was cut. Boilen, who produced the session, says they weren't happy with their performance¹⁰.

His favourite of the three is the closer, “Skrting On the Surface”. Surely my musical highlight for 2022 was this Tiny Desk concert from The Smile.¹⁰

Setlist