The Smile – ‘Cutouts’ review: Radiohead side project settles into a groove

3 October, 2024

The Smile, photo by Frank Lebon

Fans of Thom Yorke and co. are accustomed to following their faves’ trail of breadcrumbs. Radiohead have long been renowned for teasing and testing out new material onstage, with no clue as to when the tracks might see an official release. ‘True Love Waits’ famously floated in the ether for more than two decades before it finally made a soft landing, fragile as a butterfly’s wings, on 2016’s elegiac ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’.

READ MORE: The Smile live in London: a jazz-punk adventure in an entirely new world to Radiohead

The world’s most anxious rock band have released no new material since then, a vacuum that gave rise to The Smile, the muso supergroup comprised of Yorke, fellow Radiohead founding member Jonny Greenwood and jazz drummer Tom Skinner (formerly of sonic pioneers Sons of Kemet). Their previous two albums, 2022’s ‘A Light For Attracting Attention’ and ‘Wall of Eyes’, which was released just this January, sold them as a jazzier, rather more louche sibling to the main gig.

‘Cutouts’ follows in and even deepens that tradition, though many of its tracks were previously aired via the tried-and-tested live method. And it’s easy to see why the proggy, noodly likes of ‘Zero Sum’ have had fans so hot under the collar already. With its jittery guitar and taut percussion undercut by Yorke’s tongue-in-cheek lyrics (“Windows 95! Windows 95!” he exclaims in the midst of a song otherwise steeped in disdain for big tech), this is a liberated dispatch from the Radiohead extended universe. It might not get Granny on the dancefloor at your next family wedding, but it was enough for the BBC 6 Music A List.

The Smile’s M.O., then, seems to be experimentation without the baggage of Yorke and Greenwood’s bulging back catalogue – and ‘Cutouts’ certainly delivers here. Featuring the London Contemporary Orchestra, the album was recorded in Oxford and Abbey Road Studios alongside ‘Wall of Eyes’, but this is a freer, more playful set than its predecessor. Where that record boasted ‘Bending Hectic’, a lush, eight-minute ballad that collapsed into jagged dissonance that made Lou Reed sound like Aqua, this one presents ‘Instant Psalm’, a woozy pop song that channels The Beatles’ Indian classical phase.

Yorke even sounds close to earnestly optimistic on that track. If he’s not exactly throwing jazz hands when he deadpans, “We overflow in a hurricane / We can no feel pain”, there’s at least a sense of release. ‘The Slip’ ebbs with a lithe bassline, funk guitar and the frontman’s winked, sing-song delivery (“You’re gonna give us the slip tonight…”), while the similarly driving ‘No Words’ clatters along with hard-edged percussion made more palatable by tasteful washes of synth.

Eschewing any grand, overarching statement, The Smile sound – whisper it – quite comfortable within what is now their established aesthetic. But Radiohead recently entered the rehearsal studio together, which begs the question: will there be a fourth album from this curious trio? Either way, don’t be surprised if it’s now time for a total reinvention.