The Smile – Wall of Eyes

The Smile, devised by Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood as a side project during the now eight-year-long hiatus of Radiohead, return with the thought-provoking Wall of Eyes that begs the question: with music this good, do we really need to get the old band back together any time soon?

Now, for fear of the response of die-hard Radiohead fans, I should clarify. In the years since 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool, we have seen a host of Radiohead alumni helmed projects: supergroups like Atomic for Peace, solo records, a film score to a Luca Guadagnino movie, and now The Smile’s second album in two years. One that is as fresh as it is inventive, multilayered and intricate, and reflects a band freed from the constraints and weight of Radiohead’s grand reputation. It’s clear that now, two records in, The Smile cannot be regarded as simply “Radiohead filler”.

To start, the eponymous Wall of Eyes, a plucked-guitar opener that sets the tone for what is to come: diverting melodies, chamber orchestration and mournful, wistful music. The track is beautifully simple, full of quiet ruptures and subtle momentum shifts, where Yorke’s lyrics, in traditional Radiohead fashion, are still woven with gloomy portent. It is an entry that is both soothing but deeply embedded with disquiet and malcontent. 

This is a key juxtaposition that runs throughout the entirety of Wall of Eyes: competing, evolving melodies and feelings that fight for order before reaching a moment of thematic realisation, where spiralling rhythms untangle at a moment of understanding. This isn’t intricacy for intricacy’s sake, however; the album is never at odds with itself, and there is always a clear intention behind the mode switching, always a thematic purpose at play. The Smile here never come close to, for lack of a better word, “rambling”. Friend of a Friend, a tune that has shades of The Beatles à la A Day in the Life, begins with a pleasant piano piece that twists and contorts itself into something darker as Yorke’s verses plummet into a chorus thick with melty, dripping overlaid vocals. 

Teleharmonic is teeming with keyboard reverberations and a hint of Afrobeats where thick, weighty bass lines are cut with Yorke’s high octaves, hoppy percussion and the luscious “hums and ah’s” of a background choral lineup. Read the Room is laced with circular guitar lines and an overwhelming sense of paranoia. Even when the track is most at ease, Yorke’s lyrics are rife with discomfort and anguish: “Who knows what it wants from me? / This goes where it wants to be / Honey for the honey bee / I am gonna count to three / Keep this shit away from me…”

Bending Hectic, an eight-minute-long song about an ill-fated driver tumbling down an Italian mountainside, is the album’s balladic centrepiece. It winds and bends, Greenwood’s fingerpicked guitar whines as a high string is tuned upwards to breaking point as Yorke’s almost spoken-word vocals float above the ambient instrumental scene. At around the five-minute mark, we plunge into a screeching, musical descent before crashing into a wall of guitars and percussion in the most vicious, outwardly rock-heavy moment of Wall of Eyes. It’s a stellar return for The Smile, and one that fans of Radiohead should not miss.

Ronan Fawsitt
Image: Frank Lebon

Wall of Eyes is released on 26^th January 2024. For further information or to order the album visit The Smile’s website here.

Watch the video for the single Friend of a Friend here: