Listening to Radiohead was always a paranoid experience at the best of times, but what about now, when it increasingly looks like the band have split up and kept the news from us? The rock giants’ last release was A Moon Shaped Pool in 2016. The last time we were this far away from a Radiohead album was 1985.
Not that fans will be mourning in silence. Jonny Greenwood has become a prolific soundtrack composer, there was a Thom Yorke solo album in 2019, Ed O’Brien and Philip Selway have also had solo albums, and and this is the second album from The Smile – the reunion of Yorke and Greenwood, plus jazz drummer Tom Skinner – in under two years. The singer’s familiar vocal despondency and anxious, abstract lyrics, plus a fluid approach to song structure, means that this trio sound more than enough like their parent band to please long-term fans. But while Radiohead almost collapsed under the pressure of following up the pre-millennial tension of their monster hit album, OK Computer, there’s an easing of expectations that comes with this rebrand and allows for fast-moving creativity.
In several places it sounds like there’s no looking back for the members. One song is called, matter-of-factly, I Quit. Gently strobing synths, mournful piano and a cloudy bass melody combine while Yorke proclaims: “A new path out of madness/To wherever it goes.” There’s a bitter energy to Read the Room, where Skinner’s drums stutter intricately, a coiled guitar line snakes past and the frontman could easily be singing about ducking the hassle of putting his main band back together: " And when the end has come/Maybe you can’t be arsed for half a million.”
Next to the guitar-led jitteriness of the previous Smile album, Greenwood’s abilities as a string arranger are given more space here. The violin swoops on Friend of a Friend give it an uncharacteristic warmth and accessibility, even if there’s still no guessing where it will go next. Bringing the London Contemporary Orchestra to Abbey Road, there’s a Beatles moment during the big change in the eight-minute Bending Hectic. A string crescendo feels like A Day in the Life via horror movie terror, especially when a rare electric guitar barrage comes afterwards.
There are only eight songs but huge depth. With music this powerful, it’s impossible to feel short changed by what is looking less and less like a side project.
