The Smile - Live at Philharmonie de Paris, June 7, 2022
Yet another gig this year - this time with The Smile, in a very nice venue!
The Smile
The Smile is a British band, composed of:
- Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar)
- Jonny Greenwood (bass, keys)
- Tom Skinner (drummer)
For those not familiar, both Yorke and Greenwood are also Radiohead members, and it turns out I'm a huge Radiohead fan, hence me attending this gig!
The Smile was created in 2020, but their very first performance was in 2021.
They released their first album last month (May 2022).
The venue
The concert was at Philharmonie de Paris, which I knew already since I saw Thom
Yorke solo during the same festival ("Days Off") in July 2019.
This is a very nice venue, obviously with an excellent acoustic, since it was
designed to host mainly symphonic concerts.
The gig
Expectations
Surprisingly, I went to the concert without having listened to any of the songs
- not because I wanted to, but because I just didn't have time.
It was the first time for me doing this, since usually when I attend a concert,
I have listened plenty of times to the artist's album - but not this time, which
made the show a bit special to me :)
Meeting friends
Being a show that involves Yorke, meant that a bunch of the Radiohead friends I have were also here: Guillaume, Fred, Nathalie, Nicolas, Valérie... good to see familiar faces, as we've done quite a few gigs together, including the infamous Praha/Poznan 2009 trip!
Getting back to a gig's habits
We took standing tickets as we like to be close to the stage, if not at the barriers :)
It was fun to queue again (even though this can't be compared to a regular show,
since even arriving 1h before the show, there were barely 20 peoples).
Also, the security staff asked us not to run while the doors open, which was
hard since we're really used to it... but since it was not crowded, we
nevertheless managed to secure spots at the barriers!
Opening Band
Well, not a band per se, but rather an artist: Robert Stillman.
From his website: "Robert Stillman is a composer
and multi-instrumentalist from the northeast United States, currently based in
Margate, UK".
I am usually super open with opening bands at Radiohead's or Yorke's concerts,
as I have discovered great artists (Sigur Rós, Holly Herndon, Moderat, ...).
But this time, I must admit that I didn't really get into Stillman's music -
I'll give it another try though, during my next travels (already downloaded his
2 last albums for offline use on Spotify :D).
The Smile
We didn't have to wait too much after Stillman was finished - barely 10 minutes, which is super fast when I'm used to a good 30+ minutes with Radiohead!
We were on the right of the stage, in front of Tom Skinner. We knew that Thom usually stays on the left of the stage, but didn't really mind. It was a good spot anyway, really close to the stage, especially since it was not too high, so we could really see well - judge by yourself:
I didn't bring my ear plugs as I thought it wouldn't be loud, but I somehow regretted it a bit, since the sound was a bit louder than I expected.
The concert was really great and it was nice discovering "live" the album.
Thom was very relaxed and even spoke a bit of French ("merci beaucoup", "merci
pour tout le monde").
We also got lucky to see the show at all, as the band's first French concert in Lille, had to be postponed because of problems with Thom's voice.
"A Light for Attracting Attention" (the album's name) is a bit short, so Thom jokingly said "we thought 45 minutes was a bit short for a show, so we figured out that we'd play a new song" - which was "Colours Fly".
We had one Encore, with 4 songs, including an excellent version of "Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses", who's a Thom's song from 2009.
The complet setlist is available on setlist.fm, but of course we also took a picture of it:
One more thing... A Known Face
While waiting for The Smile to arrive on stage, Nathalie thought she had
recognised one tall, bald guy: "Isn't that Nigel Powell?" she asked?
Powell was "Unbelievable Truth"'s drummer - UT was a British band in the late
90's/early 2000's, with Andy Yorke (Thom's younger brother) as singer.
We called him a few times, with Fred even shouting "Nigel Powell", but to no
avail.
As we saw a tweet from
him
where he mentioned that he was indeed supported The Smile, I replied to say
that we saw him and called
him,
and he even
answered!!.
Anyway, fun, and good to see Nigel back again.
Wrap Up
It's good to go to gigs again!!!
I knew I was missing it, but that was really obvious after the show -
it was really great seeing The Smile at La Philharmonie - a very nice location,
2 months after Thom Yorke at Zermatt
Unplugged.
Tags: Music