The Smile open their North American tour in Mexico City

The Smile, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood's band with Tom Skinner, played Mexico for the first time on Wednesday 21 June, at the Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City, on the first night of a North American tour that runs to Chicago's Pitchfork festival on 21 July. The encore ended with “Bending Hectic”, which XL put out as a single the day before.

The front rows of seats had been taken out so the crowd could move, AP reported, and the hall, which the band play again on Thursday, was not quite full. Yorke said little beyond thanks in Spanish, again and again, and he and Greenwood each took a turn at the piano.

The 19 songs took in most of A Light for Attracting Attention and unreleased ones such as “Read the Room”, “Pana-Vision” and an encore song BrooklynVegan lists as “People on Balconies”. Before “Bending Hectic”, the encore also found room for “Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses”, Yorke's solo song from 2009.

On Tuesday, the night before the first show, London's NTS Radio aired Yorke's first mix for the station, two hours that open with Clark's “Ladder” and pass through Alice Coltrane, Moondog, Jorge Ben, Delia Derbyshire and Holger Czukay. Near the end comes a Radiohead track listed as “Bloom Original Loop”. This is my first mix for NTS.. no particular genre, era or anything … just stuff i've come across recently that really affected, excited me or made me think¹, Yorke wrote with it.

The Smile, Auditorio Nacional, Mexico City, 21 June 2023