The Smile, Wall of Eyes (2024)
Release Date: January 26, 2024
Label: XL
Length: 45:16
Produced By: Sam Petts-Davies
Rating: 8.5
Review by: Alexander Hellene
Highlights: “Wall of Eyes,” “Read the Room,” “Under Our Pillows,” “Friend of a Friend,” “Bending Hectic”
The Smile’s Wall of Eyes is the best Radiohead album since The Smile’s 2022 debut, A Light for Attracting Attention, which itself was the best Radiohead album since Radiohead’s In Rainbows from 2007.
Oh, don’t be so annoyed. You knew the Radiohead comparisons were coming. They’re impossible not to make, given that two-thirds of The Smile is composed of Radiohead’s creative core of singer/guitarist/keyboardist Thom Yorke and guitarist/keyboardist/everythingelsealist1 Jonny Greenwood, who here share guitar, bass, and keyboard and piano duties. Yes, there are other members of Radiohead—guitarist and backing vocalist Ed O’Brien, bassist Colin Greenwood, and drummer Phil Selway—each of whom contributes to Radiohead’s sound, but Yorke writes something like 90 percent of their music and all of their lyrics, with most of the rest, as well as the unique creative touches, supplied by Greenwood.
Yorke and Greenwood are joined by English jazz drummer Tom Skinner who is most certainly not just some random jobber on the skins. Skinner was a highly lauded drummer prior to joining The Smile, known for the group Sons of Kemet, as well as his well-regarded solo work. And Skinner is the perfect backbone to Yorke and Greenwood’s compositions, providing sympathetic stick work that is as melodic as drums can be.
I’m serious with that “melodic drums” comment: Skinner knows just what to play, accenting with the perfect cymbal zing or hi-hat chink, and more importantly knows when not to play.2 His accents, fluidity, and overall approach bring an agility to The Smile’s songs that keep them from becoming turgid or rote. It’s not that Yorke and Greenwood’s regular drummer Selway is bad—far from it! But Skinner provides a different vibe to Yorke and Greenwood’s music that was sorely needed, and seems to have given the duo a creative shot in the arm, because this album is excellent, even if it lapses at times into some of Radiohead’s worst songwriting instincts.
First and foremost, if you like Radiohead you’ll like The Smile. This is like if Morrissey and Johnny Marr started a band without Mike Joyce or Andy Rourke. All the Radiohead trademarks are there: gorgeous melodies coexisting with febrile, ever-shifting meters and guitar lines, minor key tension aching for release, unusual harmonies and chord progressions, and Thom Yorke’s soaring vocals, regarding tales of anxiety and, yes, paranoia in the best tradition of Radiohead’s closest conceptual comparison: Pink Floyd.3
Anyway, Wall of Eyes opens up with a very on-brand left-turn of a title track, a jazzy, driving acoustic guitar-driven samba in five with nary a drum to be found, just some percussive electronics and ethereal strings. An effective arranger and film composer, Greenwood uses the string section like another instrument throughout Wall of Eyes to great effect. It’s a repetitive slow boiler that builds and builds, a moody production piece that works despite having no real catharsis. I do appreciate the discordant guitars that enter near the end.
“Teleharmonic” follows, jazzy and moody piece with slinky synth pads and bass work that gives Skinner material to interact with. It works despite taking no musical detours, but we’re getting into King of Limbs territory here: meandering, impressionistic pieces that sound cool but go nowhere. And what is Yorke singing about anyway?
Will I make the morning? I don't know
Tied up in half-truths
Wanting payback, paybackWhining drones on a cold sea
Ramming down doors, piling in
Caught in dragnets by fishermen
Wanting payback, payback
The media? Lying friends? Who know. That’s part of the charm, and frustration, with Yorke’s lyrics. You appreciate the sound of them more than the meaning.
Wall of Eyes’ first half closes with the strong one-two punch of “Read the Room” and “Under Our Pillows.” These are two of the three songs here that could qualify as rock, albeit The Smile’s strange version of it. Both songs display a strong prog influence sadly lacking from Radiohead’s latter albums.
“Read the Room” might boast a Very Online title, but it has a great, lurching vibe with sinister, chiming guitars and shambolic drums with the occasional bar of six-four thrown in to keep the listener off-kilter. It’s these little touches that separate great songs from merely interesting ones. About halfway through the song opens to into a spacious 11/4 meltdown of tinkling bells and melodic bass before closing out with an unexpectedly psychedelic guitar-driven coda.
“Under Our Pillows” features another vintage Jonny Greenwood “how did he come up with that?” guitar line, a cascading arpeggio in five-eight4 that sounds like notes falling up the stairs. Whoever plays the bass (Yorke?) provides some great counterpoint, and Yorke’s vocals both rubs against and and compliment the jagged rhythms. These are masters at work. The bass conducts the song through several sections before the strings provide a rising crescendo that ends in eerie silence. Constant tension throughout, something Yorke and Greenwood have always been good at, even if this is a played-out trick.
The album’s strong streak continues with “Friend of a Friend,” bass and piano-led jazz reminiscent of Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song.” Excellent use of suspended chords create tonal ambiguity heightened by Skinner’s drumming. Once again, the strings are used sparingly but to great effect, and the song even resolves in an ear-pleasing chord—imagine that!
The last guitar-based song, “Bending Hectic,” might be the album’s best. The lyrics detail a car accident, vintage Thom Yorke subject matter, although before careening the “vintage soft top from the sixties” over the edge of an Italian mountain, he forces himself to turn . . . or does he? This ambiguity is reflected in the ethereal guitar that opens the song, sounding like it’s warbling in and out of tune. When Yorke intones he is “letting go of the wheel,” the band begins a descending chord progression that wraps back upon itself, recapitulated after a string interlude with loud guitars and flashing drums, an effective throwback to Yorke and Greenwood’s alt-rock roots.
The album, alas, is rounded out with two more mood pieces that sound good but go nowhere. I appreciate the bass ostinato and creative instrumentation of “I Quit,” but the song ultimately doesn’t deliver. Closer “You Know Me!” fares better for having a confident chord progression and more interesting production touches, providing a fittingly mellow, almost warm close to a typically cold effort like we’ve come to expect from Yorke and Greenwood over the years.
Your mileage may vary in proportion to your tolerance for ambient mood pieces and Yorke’s voice, but I for one am glad that Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood are back to making music together—and sounding like they’re enjoying it—even if “joy” isn’t the emotion one typically associates with their music.
Wall of Eyes
Wall of Eyes
Teleharmonic
Read the Room
Under Our Pillows
Friend of a Friend
I Quit
Bending Hectic
You Know Me!
My new contribution to the musical lexicon.
As a counterexample of this, an old band I was in shared the bill with a folky band consisting of a guy who sang and played acoustic guitar, a young woman who the violin, and a drummer who pounded the hell out of his kit like he was in a metal band. Sometimes incongruous styles work, other times they sound like one musician has no taste.
Forgive the obvious comp, but such lyrics and themes set to moody, mostly mid-tempo beauty can’t help but bring Pink Floyd to mind.
I keep bringing up the time signatures not to show off my knowledge of music, but to illustrate how carefully crafted these songs are; more often than not, you don’t even notice the odd time.