The Smile

Driving overnight Birmingham (somehow arriving late enough to miss breakfast at the hotel) we passed The Academy and I saw that The Smile were playing there. That night. A night off. A short walk from our billets. On paper The Smile are not playing the kind of music that ordinarily pushes my buttons but I have been loving listening to Wall of Eyes. A couple of phone calls managed to secure a handful of tickets for our party (Thanks George and Andy!).

The concert was nothing short of amazing. Nothing like I have ever seen before. There was an astonishing amount of equipment on the stage at the Academy, what you might expect to see set up in a recording studio; three banks of keyboards, two bass rigs, two complex guitar set ups with racks of guitars and basses. All this for a three piece band (occasionally supplemented by a woodwind player switching between single-reed instruments and supported by a three man team of technicians who were as committed to making the performance memorable as the musicians themselves).

I have never been one to get off on watching exceptional musicians demonstrating their prowess live. Less is more is an aesthetic that has always resonated with me: I have a playlist of one chord songs that I am constantly looking to add to; Neil Young's one note guitar solo on 'Cinnamon Girl' and Pete Townsend's insistent hammering on one string on 'I Can See For Miles' are moments of musical genius in my book.

In one analysis what The Smile are doing couldn't be any further from that aesthetic—in one analysis I could even imagine the project being filed under Jazz Rock, two words that fill me with terror when used together. But nothing seemed unnecessary—as complex as The Smiles' music is it did not come across as excessive. Most of the songs are short. Even in the longer pieces everything felt like it was part of the compositional structure, never just there to impress. I was enthralled.

There were a lot of men of a certain age in the audience at the Academy who while maybe not literally stroking their chins were more inclined to that than to join our lovely teck Gavlord (who has yet to reach that certain age) at the balcony bar and (Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake That Booty with him to some of the outrageous grooves that were being laid down as the band moved up through the gears. Thom Yorke knows how to move when the spirit takes him, hips swinging out of bounds, vocals soaring. The band shifted shape when he took on the bass playing releasing Johnny Greenwood to shine on guitar and piano as the set crescendoed. Tom Skinner drove everything effortlessly from behind his drum set for an hour and a half without ever showing off.

Gavlord reckons the evening shifted his musical worldview. It certainly challenged mine.