Excitement of 2022 Light to attract attention, the debut album from The Smile, came largely from hearing Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood shed expectations to lead one of the world's most important rock bands. More than just the fulfillment of the Radiohead guitarist's desire to make music that was “90 percent good” but released “twice as often,” what was most exciting about the project was not the guarantee of a certain quality or the promise of consistency but the loosened boundaries that freed each branch. The band, navigated through the unwavering dynamic between Yorke and Greenwood and the complex, earthy force of Tom Skinner's drumming. Having already arrived as a living, breathing being, it's no surprise that Smile is back just two years later Wall of eyesis less a refinement than a natural extension of the group's creative chemistry, where their exploratory instincts take root and extend beyond.
On their debut, The Smile sounded fresh and impatient, managing to cram disparate influences together with an emphasis on groove. Her follow-up finds no use in harnessing the frenetic energy of tracks like “You'll Never Work in TV Again,” but that doesn't mean the anxiety has subsided. For a record that can generally be described as quieter than its predecessor, it's strange how unstable their restraint feels, as all the eerie details and unresolved conclusions seem to pull them out of the paradigm of graceful maturity rather than sinking into it. The opening title track enlivens the record and creates a trance-like atmosphere, with Greenwood's string arrangements ominously interrupted by bossa nova strums that Skinner imbues with stunning gravity. Yorke mumbles and hums his mysterious calm, which extends into “Teleharmonic,” a song that debuted during Slim masks the end. However, the second track has the effect of demystifying the record's ethereal introduction, as swirling synths, Pete Wareham's flute, and sliding bass reflect the flow of Yorke's words, still steeped in uncertainty but more overtly emotional. Not only is it one of the richest arrangements here, but it also highlights the group's tendency to extract soul from the crotch in a remarkable way.
Initial impression of Wall of eyes As the most measured outing is further complicated by the tumble of ensuing contradictions, which the band expertly inhabits. Paranoia takes different forms: collective and omnipresent on “Under Our Pillows,” where Greenwood’s guitar deftly soars and locks into a motorized groove before dissolving. In mystery. Ghostly and introspective on “I Quit,” where Yorke vividly forges “a new way / Out of madness / Wherever it goes.” It's the least energetic track of all, which saves all its explosive energy for “Bending Hectic,” the eight-minute centerpiece that serves as the latest entry in Yorke's songs about car crashes. It's not a traditional prog rock epic – you can feel the fever as well as the band's disinterest in using it to turn up the intensity, and when it finally culminates in a dramatic crescendo, the undulating guitar turning into a storm of distortion, both amplified and tastefully undercut by its lyrical ambiguity: “No There's no way and no how / I'll let go of the wheel.”
The Smile's stylistic excursions always find a home in surrealism. where Wall of eyes Deviate from Light to attract attention is that it feels not only musically and aesthetically cohesive, but structurally cinematic while eschewing narrative conventions. This is why they seem comfortably drifting, constantly tense, more flexible and more focused at the same time; Why does Yorke's performance remain mesmerizing even as his words offer little to hold on to (at least in the way of palpable anxiety); And why “Bending Hectic” could plausibly belong on the same record as “Friend of a Friend,” a Beatles-esque piano-led tune that seems to rebel against the evocation of nostalgia. The album solidifies Smile's logic more than its sonic identity: it stretches the familiar to the point where it no longer resembles the point of origin but remains inseparable from it.
Although inspired by lockdown videos of Italians singing to each other on their balconies, their loneliness belies the specter of conservatism, and fans may be keen to catch some of the essence of Smiley in 'Friend of a Friend'. “I can go anywhere I want/I just gotta turn myself inside out and back on,” Yorke sings in the song he wrote in the midst of the tour. “They're all smiling, so I guess I'll stay / At least until the down ones eat themselves.” But there is no sense of complacency Wall of eyeswhich is brimming with evidence of a band bursting with ideas, strangely bending them into shape until they are no longer serviceable.
