This year Thom York, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner of The Smile dropped two more daring albums for us to feast upon, both entirely rooted in socio-political critique. Faith Hussain reviews.
WALL OF EYES
In January The Smile released Wall Of Eyes, an album filled with cold bossa nova tracks and pulsating trances to reveal a more meditative album than their 2022 album A Light for Attracting Attention. This album listens to be introspective and personal critique on modern society, with Yorke often singing as characters or from mementos. Wall of Eyes opens with the melancholic lyrics “You will go behind a wall of eyes/Of your own device/Is that still you with the hollow eyes”, marking the tonality for the entire album: fragility and surveillance. Teleharmonic, my favourite from the album, also is consumed by uncertainty with Yorke chanting “where are you taking me”. The second track utilises these lyrics warped in deep synths to form a storm of ambient textures and intricate rhythms, evoking an almost claustrophobic sense of introspection. These layered soundscapes build an atmosphere that feels both vast and insular, capturing the existential anxiety of modern life.
Bending Hectic demonstrates The Smile’s more meditative twist throughout Wall of Eyes but juxtaposes hypnotically gentle strings with violent words that Yorke narrates for this made up character in what appears to be a suicide ballad via car crash. The Smile demonstrate their musical excellence in using music to almost act as a sound effect for this story; when Greenwood’s strings explode into a hell-scape of anxiety we can assume its mimicking the screeching of car tires and a fatal crash that depict the final moments of this character.
Yorke and Greenwood from Radiohead formed The Smile during the COVID-19 lockdown as a way for Greenwood to write riffs and Yorke to record, it’s not surprising their musical outputs appear so beautifully unsettling and lyricism so fearful of the modern world.
The fifth track, Friend of a Friend, describes another narration from a memento: neighbours socialising in Italy during COVID-19 lockdowns, “friends step out to talk and wave”. A sudden increase in piano tempo, appearance of alarmed saxophone and distorted moans from Yorke blockades the next lyrics “I guess I believe in an altered state” which captures the fragmented emotional experience of isolation and connection. The abrupt shift in tempo and the unsettling moans evoke a sense of rupture, as if even the most ordinary moments are tainted by an underlying unease, a motif throughout this album. This song in my opinion really cements The Smile as distinct from Radiohead with a more jazzy detour.
This album feels a lot more lullaby like and less explosive than A Light for Attracting Attention despite Yorke’s emotively masterful lyricism. There's nothing that hit me quite like the way you will never work in television again did. Personally I love the raw energy the smile brought to their first album. Which is why Cutouts, the second the Smile album release of this year, appealed to me more.
CUTOUTS
Cutouts, their third album released in December, takes a more atmospheric electronic route whilst still dealing with themes of alienation and socio-political critique but shifts towards existential themes like environmental collapse rather than more personal stories.
Cutouts, in my opinion, doesn’t flow as well as Wall of Eyes but if listened solo the tracks are brilliant. It feels more spontaneous and funkier. Cutouts commences with Foreign Spies, a more sombre track that centres around Yorke’s eerie lyricism and synths that paint a dystopian vision of surveillance and manipulation. The Smile utilise gentle electronic synths here to evoke a wave of calmness, underscoring the dichotomy of gentle music masking underlying fear in the lyrics; the music becomes a metaphor for the obscuring of truth to people regarding socio-political issues.
The third track, Zero Sum is a faced pace ensemble of experimental funky riffs and brass accents that make it a stand out track for me! It very much reminds me of frantic tracks from their first album, I absolutely love it. Yorke delivers commentary “windows 95” filled with so much dread intertwined with syncopated bass and angular percussion from Skinner, referencing the computing Ted Talk by Bill Gates. This track although upbeat and funkier is consumed with paranoid technological fears as the riffs get nastier.
In a similar vein, Colours Fly incorporates swirling Middle Eastern scales with woodwinds and disembodied vocals like “you’re gonna say goodnight” to birth a panic and sense of mortality in a dangerous modern world. It almost feels as if I’m drowning while listening, but Greenwood resuscitates with his sudden psychedelic-like guitar buts.
Further into the album, The Slip (another standout, maybe my favourite?) and No Words turn to a more electronically ambient post punky upbeat tracks before ending on a mellow one. The riffs are so bouncy and bass so punchy that Greenwood absolutely steals the show in both, but special mention to The Slip. Yorke’s lyrics are so powerfully spoken, drilling the words “Give us the slip… threaten to press the button”, suggesting the avoidance of blame for a situation- in this case nuclear war. Yorke urges that all the power held for devastation is in the hands of individuals; the playful, almost mischievous tone of Greenwood's riffs contrasts sharply with the ominous implications of Yorke's lyrics, amplifying the mocking tone of this track and lack of attention being paid to global issues.
Cutouts ends with Bodies Laughing, an entrapping and claustrophobic array of strings and warnings muttered from Yorke. The gradual inclusion of Skinners percussion mutates with an electronic synth to provide a sense of urgency within this track. Yorke’s lyricism also mutates “everybody’s laughing/ bodies laughing” changes from “everybody” to the singular “body”. The bodies are disconnected from reality and aimlessly laugh whilst the synths could represent the act brainwashing. Yorke could be referencing climate crisis denial, or the plague of modern life in not taking harmful possibilities seriously.
For me, Cutouts wins my favourite album despite the lyrical genius and ease of flow in Wall of Eyes. For those wanting a more mellow album listen, go to Wall of Eyes. I will absolutely not knock how great this album is with Yorke’s excellence of storytelling blended with Skinner's more jazz focused approach and Greenwood's meditative strings. But Cutouts' loud existentialism and frantic performances from the trio receives as something more powerful and raw upon the socio political climate of today.
Faith Hussain
Edited by Alice Beard
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