It may be unwise to prematurely wonder about the fate of Radiohead, still one of the most important bands in the world. But confronted by this assured, slinky and tuneful follow-up to 2022’s A Light for Attracting Attention, the Smile are categorically where Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood are expending their A-game energies right now – this pared-down, agile iteration of Yorke’s and Greenwood’s sound, abetted by Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner.
To A Light…’s funkiness and rage, Wall of Eyes adds psychedelia, 70s German motorik and the strings of the London Contemporary Orchestra. It’s a more considered, unspooling record, but maintains the Smile’s high bar. The band’s touring schedule has allowed this fresh Smile album to grow quite organically out of its predecessor. A number of songs destined for Wall of Eyes have been debuted live and worked into set lists over the past couple of years. Bending Hectic, Wall of Eyes’s nail-biting car-accident set piece, came out a year ago, ostensibly as a standalone. (A live album recorded at Montreux jazz festival was released in December 2022 followed by a 2023 limited-edition vinyl EP, Europe: Live Recordings.)
Standout track Friend of a Friend began life live in 2022 as People on Balconies. The lyrics describe neighbours socialising alfresco in Italy, a common practice during Covid-19 lockdowns (Yorke’s partner, Dajana Roncione, is Italian). Events turn sour (“we take a tumble”) and suspicious (“All of that money/ Where did it go?”). Built from piano and increasingly alarmed strings, Friend of a Friend finds the Smile – notionally a jazz-augmented detour from Radiohead – also taking an unexpectedly orthodox, Beatle-y turn.
Other tracks, such as Under Our Pillows – built around a penetrating Greenwood guitar figure – have been available via YouTube fan footage. The brooding, wistful, flute-enhanced Teleharmonic made an appearance in an earlier life on Peaky Blinders (under a slightly different name). Different artists take a wide variety of paths in presenting their work nowadays, from dropping unheard new tracks all at once to long, drawn-out reveals across social media. The fact that there are live fan favourites out there that have not yet made it to recorded versions makes the Smile feel less like a side project and increasingly like a going concern who are workshopping a significant body of work in real time.
There have, of course, been umpteen Radiohead offshoots before – Atoms for Peace, solo Yorke albums, most often electronic, Greenwood’s scores for Paul Thomas Anderson films, a solo Ed O’Brien outing. But the Smile now feel like a living, breathing organism as dynamic and real as Yorke and Greenwood’s day job. The pair naturally provide continuity between projects; Wall of Ice was once rumoured to be a mooted Radiohead EP title. As with Damon Albarn’s many outlets, their core set of concerns and signature melodic voices often remain consistent across configurations.
It’s worth pointing up the differences that remain, of course. A crucial one is Skinner, who has also drummed for Floating Points and Kano. He is a decade younger than O’Brien and Yorke, and his role, in theory, has been to add even more complex rhythms to Yorke and Greenwood’s often knotty cat’s cradles of music. But he is also a skilled multi-instrumentalist with an entirely fresh set of inputs, whose keyboard credits confirm an increasingly expanded brief.
Another is more of a vibe. In the Smile, it feels like Yorke and Greenwood become liberated to sidestep the expectations, admin and headaches that must come when booting up the mothership. You can see the appeal: three musicians, sometimes augmented by saxophonist Robert Stillman; they can move more nimbly and create modern classical/funk hybrid jams to their hearts’ contents.
Yorke could be fulminating against any number of things on Read the Room, a superb three-legged processional that turns into a motorik prowl halfway through. But the more skittish among Radiohead fans, already a group self-selecting for twitchiness, could easily project a great deal on to these lyrics. “And when the time is right,” sings Yorke, “And when the end has come/ Maybe you can’t, maybe you can’t/ Be arsed for half a million.”
What Wall of Eyes lacks is the shock of the new. It’s a second album, and much of it is loose online, with two novelties. You Know Me! ends the set with what sounds like a gentle love song turned on its head, Yorke’s falsetto pondering those – maybe album reviewers – who think they know him, but don’t.
The subtle, unfurling I Quit, meanwhile, marries guitar, piano and percussion to create an arpeggiating Doppler effect strafed by electronics. “This is my stop, this is the end of the trip,” sings Yorke. In the same breath he’s ruminating on “conscience” and “brotherhood” and “a new path out of the madness, to wherever it goes”. That path may well be shaped like a smile.
