I’ve never been in a beloved band with a near-immaculate discography, but I have to imagine that, at some point, the paralyzing pressure of making a new album—of knowing you risk bumming out fans and mucking up a perfect legacy—sucks some of the joy and spontaneity out of music-making. In other words: I get it, this whole thing. Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood don’t want to spend four years obsessively laboring to complete a album worthy of sitting next to in your vinyl nook.
They want to keep moving. Greenwood, the self-proclaimed “most impatient” member of Radiohead, if “the records were 90 percent as good, but come out twice as often.” It’s in that spirit that the Smile, the little Radiohead spinoff that could, present their second album of 2024, cobbled together from the same sessions that produced but, like , too good to be dismissed as a bastard child.
Compared with its predecessor, is looser, funkier—a thrilling testament to the near-telepathic chemistry these three musicians have honed across two years of touring. The stage is where many of these songs first premiered: the pastoral brooder “Bodies Laughing” in May 2022, a mere and “Colours Fly” , where guest musician Robert Stillman—then playing sax, now on bass clarinet—triggered the song’s ascent into squealing free-jazz delirium. Greenwood’s omnivorous curiosity is a big theme here.
“Colours Fly,” with its frantic Egyptian scales, reflects Greenwood’s recent immersion in Mid.