Radiohead stars break free, and it’s (almost) enough to make Thom SMILE
THE SMILE: Wall Of Eyes (XL) Verdict: Bold visions ))))*
ROBERTA FLACK: Lost Takes (Arc) Verdict: Birth of a legend ))))*
THEY started life as a lockdown side-project, but The Smile are now seemingly the main event for Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood. As members of Radiohead, singer Yorke and guitarist Greenwood were behind classics such as The Bends and OK Computer, but their desire for an imminent return to the day job appears to be waning.
Unlike their original band, quiet since 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool, The Smile are prolific. With Yorke and Greenwood accompanied by Tom Skinner, an exceptional jazz drummer, they have made two studio LPs and two live ones in the past 20 months. With a 2024 tour stretching from spring into summer, there are no prizes for guessing where their focus currently lies.
As with anything in the orbit of Radiohead, who can be difficult at times, there’s one question to be asked of the new Smile album, Wall Of Eyes: are there any good tunes?
If you’re looking for infectious hooks to hum on the way to work, the answer’s no. If you’re happy to give these beautifully crafted pieces of music a little time, it’s a rewarding listen.
There’s a sense that The Smile have been liberated, without the expectations that surround Radiohead.
Fans of the latter will miss Ed O’Brien’s backing vocals and the fluent basslines of Greenwood’s brother, Colin, but there’s ample compensation: detours into acoustic Americana; the title track’s Latin swing; the strings of the London Contemporary Orchestra.
It’s a step up from the trio’s debut, 2022’s A Light For Attracting Attention, which featured clashing musical ideas and works-in-progress exhumed from the Radiohead vaults.
MANY of these eight songs have been tested live and the musicianship has a natural, road-hardened flow. On Read The Room, Greenwood reiterates his stature as one of our most inventive rock musicians.
One constant is Yorke’s gloomy, paranoid lyric writing. He isn’t one of life’s glass-half-full guys. ‘Don’t let them take me!’ he pleads on Under Our Pillows. The title track alludes to a looming, but ambiguous, threat. ‘Is that still you, with the hollow eyes?’ he asks in a ghostly falsetto.
The centrepiece, though, is Bending Hectic, an eight-minute melodrama that opens with folky guitar before changing shape to a gnarly rocker. Driving through Italy in ‘a vintage soft-top from the Sixties’, and approaching a hairpin bend on a mountain, Yorke’s protagonist flirts with death before pulling back from the brink. ‘Despite these slings, despite these arrows… I force myself to turn.’
It’s one of several tracks that echo Yorke and Greenwood’s soundtrack work. Yorke wrote the score for 2018’s Suspiria, and Greenwood received an Oscars nod for Phantom Thread. Those cinematic skills are to the fore here.
There’s no suggestion as yet that Radiohead are about to call it quits. For now, though, it’s The Smile who are beaming. ■ ROBERTA FLACK only retired from music in 2022, following a diagnosis of motor neurone disease, but the 86-year-old’s legacy had been well established by then. Solo hits such as Killing Me Softly With His Song and her duets with the late Donny Hathaway earmark her as an American soul great — and a new set of early recordings will only burnish that reputation.
Overseen by respected DJ and broadcaster Gilles Peterson, Lost Takes gathers the 1968 demos that preceded Flack’s debut album First Take, which arrived a year later and gave the singer a hit with her cover of Ewan MacColl’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.
These early tracks were included on a 2020 reissue of First Take, but are now available in their own right — and for the first time on vinyl.
With the onus on soulful subtlety rather than the gospel grit of an Aretha Franklin, Lost Takes contains no overlap with her debut album. Flack shines on show tune This Could Be The Start Of Something before using On The Street Where You Live, from My Fair Lady, to showcase her piano skills.
Her take on Motown classic Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, a blend of jazz and R&B, was a pointer to the star she’d become. O BOTH albums are out today. The Smile play Dublin’s 3 Arena on March 7, see (ticketmaster.ie).