There’s nothing wrong with a band playing fast and loose with a side project like The Smile especially when 2 of the 3 members of the side project are from Radiohead. As one of the most important and influential acts in music history, there’s a certain air of expectation that comes along with the territory. I don’t blame Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood for wanting to slip out the back and create music outside the Radiohead vacuum. But now on their sophomore album Wall Of Eyes, should The Smile be held with the same accountability?
Wall Of Eyes is a solid album of brooding yet beautiful dirges Yorke and company are known for. Fragile vocal lines, mysterious melodies, stirring string arrangements, and delectable pivots in each composition. “Read The Room” has the syncopation of In Rainbows paired with a snide/angelic call-and-response vocal track. “Friend Of A Friend” is a piano ballad with an almost Randy Newman quality. “Bending Hectic” features a David Bowie meets Frank Sinatra vibe with spacey discord guitars and strings before growing into a distorted march.
As interesting as that sounds, the same could be said about pretty much any Radiohead release. And therein lies the problem with The Smile.
In the opening of this article, I feel as if I’m giving multiple passes, almost excuses, for The Smile. Be it correlating them to Radiohead, a theory on the project’s mission statement, or most jarring, a free pass on making predictable music. Is this what we’re doing for these guys now? Of course, I wouldn’t label any of the songs on Wall Of Eyes as outright bad, but there isn’t much here to justify its existence in the grand scheme of things. Or at least in the Radiohead lexicon.
I think any Radiohead fan could tell you that this band at its worst (sans Pablo Honey) is objectively better than most bands at their absolute best. But that also feels like yet another systematic excuse. Despite its quality, Wall Of Eyes is very safe. And when the whole of putting together a side project was to free themselves from the weight of expectation, playing it safe all but undermines the mission statement.
This becomes more apparent when you take into account the album’s lack of urgency.
Take the record’s opening tracks for example. The title track is a light Bossanova-flavored acoustic track that goes nowhere if not for the string arrangement at the end. A trick utilized in nearly every other song on the album. “Teleharmonic” spends most of its runtime climbing a staircase that leads to an abrupt ending with nothing to show for it. Leading an album with two of the weakest tracks is never a good sign. But it’s even worse when the same critique of those particular songs could be applied to the weakest tracks on In Rainbows, King Of Limbs, and A Moon Shaped Pool.
Playing around with expectation has always been the forte of Yorke. When he isn’t pretending like Radiohead’s debut record doesn’t exist (and rightfully so), he’s playing sarcastically coy about when the next Radiohead will head into production, if ever. It’s almost like the band’s own lore at this point. That element adds another layer of importance to every release. But at what point does that become sort of a crutch?
If we justify predictable releases, the lore of The Smile becomes more about exploiting the leniency of die-hard fans and critics alike.
With the 2021 debut single, “You’ll Never Work In Television Again” The Smile gave the listeners a spark of spontaneity. This was a new band free from the restraint. One where these guys could plug in their guitars, get weird, and have fun. But even touring that record meant most of their sets delved back into the brooding atmosphere of late-era Radiohead. Relying on previous band hype to sell a new, allegedly different band is almost a cheat in itself.
Again, Wall Of Eyes isn’t a bad record by any means. There’s a lot to love here. But where is the excitement of experimenting? The urgency and immediacy? This is a group of guys who can do anything they want when they want, and how they want. Money is no object and neither is time or schedules. Plus, fans and critics will gladly consume and praise the result. With this much freedom and liberty, there is no room for pedestrian music. As decent as Wall Of Eyes is, there is no way Yorke and Greenwood could consider this their best or most ambitious work. If they can’t consider it that, how could fans and critics?
With a catalog from The Bends to A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead owes fans and critics absolutely nothing.
But with their prestige comes accountability. Yorke and Greenwood have more than earned their place among artists who can release music how they see fit. If this is the record they wanted to release, I can respect it. However, as listeners, we also have our place to call out safe releases when we hear them. The genesis of The Smile may have been to shift the weight of expectation. But if The Smile’s Wall of Eyes shows us anything, its legacy will break before it bends.
Wall Of Eyes is now streaming everywhere and available to purchase at XL Recordings.