The Smile has all the hallmarks of a pandemic project. Only a deadly, momentum-throttling year could have cleared enough schedules for it to happen in the first place. Unable to convene Radiohead in 2020, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood connected with U.K. jazz drummer Tom Skinner to workshop new songs. Their 2022 debut, A Light for Attracting Attention, was meatier than the typical Radiohead offshoot. With Skinner, they tore into tricky rhythmic workouts, acerbic rockers, and somber folk songs, traversing their disconcerting landscape like doomsayers who’ve been warning of a coming catastrophe since the Clinton-Blair era. Their sophomore album, Wall of Eyes, capitalizes on that momentum, deepening the trio’s chemistry, surveying a world that hasn’t fully reckoned with 2020’s trauma.
Like a Stygian passage from A Light’s gloomy “Skrting on the Surface,†Wall of Eyes floats in with worried observations about the present, fussing about “whining drones†in the sultry “Teleharmonic.†The video for the single “Friend of a Friend†plants the band in front of a tough crowd: a room full of children. Elegant Nilssonisms from Yorke fail to impress the kids, but flashing lights heralding the cavernous and unsettling chorus get their attention. Their initial boredom in the presence of rock legends juxtaposed with lyrics recalling the era when we got most of our offline social contact from applauding essential workers — “All the window balconies, they seem so flimsy as our / Friends step out to talk and wave and catch a piece of sun†— suggests it takes more razzle dazzle to turn our brains on than it used to.
To the extent that Wall of Eyes adheres to any theme, it’s this kind of fatherly bemusement and concern. Yorke’s not screaming at the people in the streets to find each other’s humanity anymore. “Maybe I can’t be arsed,†“Read the Room†exclaims. “This crashing currency / These candy aerosols / These massive egos / So big, they bend the light high.†“Bending Hectic†picks up where ominous first-album highlights like “You Will Never Work in Television Again†and “We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings†left off, spying chaos on the horizon: “We’re coming to a bend now / Skidding ’round the hairpin / A sheer drop down.†Yorke considers enjoying the view on the way to the collision. It’s not his first time using a car crash as a metaphor for change and renewal: “I’m back to save the universe,†he sang after getting jackknifed in OK Computer’s “Airbag.†In the hang time of “Bending Hectic,†the singer is only summoning the courage to grab the steering wheel, turn himself around, and evade the worst outcome.
Wall of Eyes is a work of psychedelic retreat. Millennial and Gen X music nerds sometimes looked to Yorke and Greenwood for guidance in navigating the jittery 21st century. But now the duo just wants to chase cool riffs and see where they lead. That wasn’t always the case. In 2000, Yorke said he didn’t want to be in a rock band anymore, and Greenwood bristled at the very concept in 2017: “Even when we were starting out, it felt like everyone’s been in a band. Bands were already old hat. That felt true then, and more so today.†Since then, Radiohead has gotten diligent about archive management, rescuing legendary B-sides and maintaining a website without releasing any new music. Working with Skinner has excited old impulses; the new album is best enjoyed as another rare opportunity to swipe a road-tested rock institution’s brain trust for gymnastic power-trio exercises. The new songs tend to run longer this time, owing to an interest in slowly building structures to warp by surprise or to systematically destroy. “Hectic†methodically transforms stately, spectral free jazz into a grungy coda that bears a shocking resemblance to a Smashing Pumpkins jam, with Yorke opening up the vibrato in his voice for the tuuuuuurnnnnn while Skinner slips into a Ginger Baker attack and Greenwood whizzes fuzzy staccato notes around like munitions.
The Smile documents three guys remembering how much noise they can make among themselves, but Wall also carries the fingerprints of its studio and producer. Sam Petts-Davies assisted with Yorke’s soundtrack for the 2018 Suspiria remake, and they reunited to record this album at Abbey Road, where the Beatles’ classics were birthed. The engineer’s flair for arrangements and the studio’s history of bombastic recordings seep in, try as the band might to fight the obvious influence. (“I mean we were in Abbey Road,†Yorke told NME recently, “but it’s like, ‘Let’s not do that, eh?’â€) Closer “You Know Me!†is a droning meditation on the fear of surrendering to connectivity, a “Within You Without You†for the terminally online: “Don’t think you know me / Don’t think that I am everything you say.†The fuzz bass lick in “Read the Room†soaks in the dark heaviness of Black Sabbath and Cream until acoustic guitars and flutes burst into the mix; before you get adjusted to that routine, the band vanishes into a motorik groove, guitar notes metastasizing throughout. You find yourself forgetting how many musicians are present. The goal of a compact rock band is to punch above its weight (like Jack White simulating a bass player using a Digitech Whammy pedal in “Seven Nation Armyâ€). The Smile toys with the idea. Sometimes it forces you to think about how few people are making all that noise and sometimes it lets bustling orchestral sweeps sneak up on you like a jump scare.
Wall’s gauntlet of zesty compositional twists and extensive library of musical reference points make it obvious that these players inspire each other. Their songs poke around rock history: Radiohead’s middle period, when guitars eclipsed synths and drum machines; ’60s protometal and ’70s prog peaks like the turn-on-a-dime chaos of early Soft Machine or the math-defying heft of King Crimson’s three-piece era; the fire Jim O’Rourke brought to Sonic Youth in Murray Street and Sonic Nurse. There’s also no telling how long The Smile will stick around. They could very well find themselves knee deep in two or three different projects in a year. In 2019, Yorke was making dance music while Skinner toured with the jazz outfit Sons of Kemet and Greenwood unleashed terrifying string compositions on BBC Proms. Dropping two albums and two live recordings in 20 months screams “Here for a good time, not a long time.†The lyrics that accompany stuttering guitars and cascading drums throughout the hazy “I Quit†seek “a new path out of the madness†as Yorke sweetly intones, “To wherever it goes.†It feels like a fractured mission statement. On their debut, The Smile stressed out over government corruption and the direction of the human race. A harrowing year and a half later, the trio’s just seeking fulfillment in the routine of creating things, like anyone else.