A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile

The album at #15 this year presents an interesting conundrum. “If it walks like a Radiohead album, and talks like a Radiohead album, then it most certainly has to be a Radiohead album.” (Radiohead: #26 and #7 in 2011, #3 in 2016) But no, the fantastic A Light for Attracting Attention is not a new Radiohead album. It’s the debut album of a project called The Smile, featuring Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood (the two principal songwriters from Radiohead), along with drummer Tom Skinner. No Colin Greenwood, Ed O’Brien, or Philip Selway anywhere to be seen on this album. But longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich is here, making every sound hum with that unique Radiohead tone.

There’s not much I can say about the songs. You know what Radiohead songs sound like, and you know whether you like them or not. There is no new ground being broken here. Fantastic, syncopated rhythms from Skinner, Jonny’s excellent finger picking, and Thom’s haunting falsetto make you forget the outside world for 13 songs stretched across 53 minutes and 18 seconds.

Perhaps you knew that Thom and Jonny had a side project. They’ve done a ton of promotion around the album, starting with a surprise 32-minute performance video created a year into Covid, in May 2021 and streamed as part of the Glastonbury Festival. They performed eight entirely new songs, and nobody was sure quite what was going on. Then, early in 2022 they performed in front of audiences at three separate shows in London, which were also live-streamed worldwide. The album then finally came out on May 13th, 2022 and the trio set off on an international tour that just concluded on December 22.

Along the way, the band stopped in at a couple of my favorite radio programs to record some in-studio sessions. First came the band’s Tiny Desk Concert on NPR’s All Songs Considered, hosted by Bob Boilen. The band only played three songs there (with a fourth that was recorded but ultimately scrapped thanks to band veto), all stripped-down and quiet. Shortly after that came the KEXP live session, an intimate performance by the band the day before playing their sold-out show in Seattle. They played five songs in that set, demonstrating their live chops in a small, slightly chaotic room. The band have released three videos as well, including Pana-vision above (starring the one and only Cillian Murphy), “Thin Thing,” and “Free in the Knowledge”.

That’s about all I can say. A Light for Attracting Attention by ~~Radiohead~~ The Smile is wonderful. Pick it up if you’re only hearing about it for the first time.

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16. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar
17. Inside Problems by Andrew Bird
18. Laurel Hell by Mitski
19. Full Moon Project by Phosphorescent
20. Skinty Fia by Fontaines D.C.
21. I Love You Jennifer B by Jockstrap
22. Too Much to Ask by Cheekface
23. Dripfield by Goose
24. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You by Big Thief
25. And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow by Weyes Blood
26. NOT TiGHT by DOMi & JD BECK
27. Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain
28. Live at KEXP, vol. 10 by Various Artists
29. All You Need Is Time by Daisy the Great
30. Cool It Down by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
31. CAPRISONGS by FKA twigs

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NPR All Songs Considered’s Bob Boilen says:

The Tiny Desk has moved, and OK Go has helped make it so.

Earlier this year, we needed to figure out the best possible way to move my Tiny Desk from NPR’s old headquarters to our new facility just north of the U.S. Capitol. We wanted to go out with a bang and arrive at our new space in style, so our thoughts naturally turned to a catchy pop band we love: OK Go, whose unforgettable videos have been viewed tens of millions of times on YouTube.

Bandleader Damian Kulash used to be an engineer at an NPR member station in Chicago, so we figured he’d be up for helping us execute a simple idea: Have OK Go start performing a Tiny Desk Concert at our old location, continue playing the same song while the furniture and shelving is loaded onto a truck, and finish the performance at our new home. In addition to cameos by many of our NPR colleagues — Ari Shapiro, Audie Cornish, David Greene, Guy Raz, Scott Simon, Alix Spiegel, Susan Stamberg and more — this required a few ingredients:

Number of video takes: 223

Percent used in final version: 50

Number of raw audio channels: 2,007

Percent used in final version: 50

Number of microphones: 5

Number of hard-boiled eggs consumed: 8, mostly by bassist Tim Nordwind

Number of seconds Carl Kasell spent in the elevator with OK Go: 98

Number of times Ari Shapiro played the tubular bells: 15

Number of pounds the tubular bells weighed: 300

Number of times the shelves were taken down and put back up: 6

Number of days it took to shoot: 2

Number of cameras: 1

OK Go played “All Is Not Lost” from Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, with words tweaked by the All Songs Considered team. And so begins a new era for the Tiny Desk, after 277 concerts (counting this one) in our old home.

The Carl Kasell bit is my favorite part.