To discuss the Smile is to first mention by obligation the shadow over their shoulders that looms in the shape of Radiohead. The avenue of which the iconic alternative rock band’s music has been at its best has been that which fucks with a synergy in ultra modern soundscapes, and while that still exists somewhere in them if the band ever does decide to break hiatus, the cinematic grandeur that’s swallowed their late-career efforts has tempered those ambitions. Until then, the Smile — Thom York and Johnny Greenwood’s project alongside former Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner — has, dare it be said, officially eclipsed Radiohead in that timeline in delivering full-on artful weirdness. With their 2022 debut, A Light for Attracting Attention, the trio fastened their footing in this territory of experimental rock exploration, where nods to peak guitar-rock Radiohead and freeform jazz coexisted on the same dimensional plane. The band’s sophomore follow-up, Wall of Eyes, expands on those brainier creative temptations in a way that can feel like Yorke’s voice is not intended to be it’s focal point, but rather a vessel for energy to float across astral planes in ellipses and singed into noisier ether in others, metaphorically of course for all that which physically plagues our terrestrial existence. Skinner’s role of the equation has become all the more paramount here, with his percussive hand particlizing hyperkinetic throughout, transfixing the Smile’s style more into cosmic jazz rock while Greenwood’s guitar — droning, motorik, and gravity amorphous – embraces the portals Skinner’s rhythm opens head on. Echoes of digital ghosts, ambient pianos, and a dramatic squalor of strings aided by the London Contemporary Orchestra occasionally visit the Smile’s corner of the universe, but Wall of Eyes heightens new senses in their body .

Highlights: “Teleharmonic”, “Read the Room”, “Bending Hectic”,

The Smile’s Wall of Eyes is available now on XL Recordings.

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