Label: XL Recordings
Released: 26th January 2024
When The Smile released their debut album ‘A Light for Attracting Attention’, it was hard to imagine that it could get any better than that. Yet somehow, it has. Finding unique paths through familiar Radiohead terrain, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood along with drummer Tom Skinner – musicians of the calibre that they are – have created what could only be described as a masterpiece with their new album ‘Wall of Eyes’.
The opening title-track introduces a sonic theme that seems to run throughout the record: a tension between beauty and chaos. The strings, acoustic guitar, and Yorke’s voice, all contrast to the ticking clock-like drums and thunderous sounds that reverberate throughout the track. ‘Teleharmonic’ is more electronic with exquisite harmonies and flutes, and intensity heightens in ‘Read the Room’ – in which Yorke’s vocals become more confronting as they simmer on top of Greenwood’s dissonant guitar before building to a crashing crescendo.
Greenwood’s signature jagged riffs are heard no clearer than in ‘Under Our Pillows’, a track in which Skinner’s drumming is also a particular highlight. It almost feels like two songs in one, with an ethereal switch-up halfway through which leads to an almost sci-fi, cinematic and incredibly unsettling string-led ending. ‘Friend of a Friend’ and ‘I Quit’ give us a brief break from the chaos with their lilting and sentimental melodies, but disorder is always bubbling away underneath – managing to break through in the former’s bridge before plateauing into beautiful strings.
Penultimate track ‘Bending Hectic’ is the record’s tour de force. Clocking in at eight minutes in length, it’s one of those songs you’d give anything to hear again for the first time. It’s hauntingly beautiful, and leaves you constantly guessing its rhythmic path. The guitars sound as if they’re in constant escalation as Yorke echoes off lyrics full of poetic metaphors and images. Patience is a virtue when it comes to this band, demonstrated best by this song’s slow build-up to its final crescendo – it’s scary as hell and the payoff is intense, rough and loud.
As ‘You Know Me’ brings the album to a lo-fi and cathartic close, it’s hard not to feel as if you’ve just been on an eight-track-long emotional rollercoaster. The album lands in a space between the uncomfortable and the serene, and as a whole makes you simultaneously want to curl up and weep, yet also lay in a field somewhere admiring the world’s wonders. From its opening note to its last, ‘Wall of Eyes’ sets the bar sky-high for the music of 2024.
