Is Thom Yorke & Jonny Greenwood’s Band The Smile Coming To Australia?

Could Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood be planning their first-ever visit to Australia with their band, The Smile?

Taking to social media overnight, the Radiohead frontman shared a video of himself performing the King Of Limbs classic, Bloom, solo on piano live from Electric Lady Studios (the full video was uploaded to YouTube in 2019).

In the caption, he asked fans to subscribe to the W.A.S.T.E. mailing list – a service that offers news about Radiohead, The Smile, and the band members’ solo projects – for news that concerns fans on this side of the world.

“Subscribe to w.a.s.t.e for some new news coming shortly, mostly concerning Australasia and Japan,” the Karma Police singer wrote. You can subscribe to W.A.S.T.E. here.

Subscribe to w.a.s.t.e for some new news coming shortly, mostly concerning Australasia and Japan https://t.co/7oy3Av36u3 pic.twitter.com/GJdKw18Qgb

— Thom Yorke (@thomyorke) May 31, 2024

Radiohead haven’t been on tour since August 2018, so the chance of the English rockers coming to Australia seems unlikely. The Smile, however, last played a show in March and are set to tour Europe from 7 June to 30 August, playing a bunch of festivals along the way. This leaves their touring schedule wide open for Australasia and Japan.

The Smile, comprising Yorke, Greenwood and drummer Tom Skinner from jazz outfit Sons Of Kemet, formed in 2020 and made their surprise debut with a live-streamed performance at Glastonbury Festival in 2021. That year, they dropped their debut album, A Light For Attracting Attention, produced by Radiohead’s longtime collaborator Nigel Godrich.

In January, The Smile released their second album, Wall Of Eyes. To celebrate the release, fans enjoyed a full-album playback of Wall Of Eyes in cinemas. Sydney was treated to two screenings on Tuesday, 23 January, at the Golden Age Cinema.

In a live review of Radiohead’s most recent show in Australia – at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena in November 2012 – The Music’s Bryget Chrisfield wrote:

“It's the perfectly executed song segues that totally do us in: There There (such wounded guitar sounds!) into Karma Police (cue deafening crowd sing-along that temporarily summarises our collective consciousness: “And for a minute there/I lost myself/I lost myself”) and a segment of (Björk's) Unravel into Everything In Its Right Place, for which a Tibetan flag adorns Yorke's electric piano. The two encores equal half the amount of songs presented in the main set, but it's still not long enough.”