Tonight I watched Trainspotting and then re-listened, properly, to The Smile’s new record, Wall of Eyes. It’s beautiful, and real good for grooving. Thom Yorke’s ability to feel out (or intuitively guess, or intuitively guess because he wrote the song) vocally where a guitar or synth note is leading, to ride out the note or tone and inflect or ease into or match that note or tone is otherworldly. It’s jazz, probably. Tom Skinner has (to me, an amateur describer of music-playing) a subtle and brilliant pocket game, the irregular grooves are as much psychedelic as they are jazz. Jonny Greenwood (presumably) brought the cinematography, the drama. The trio is perfect, they have saved the planet, no more to fear as long as you don’t read the lyrics.
Under Our Pillows and Bending Hectic have two stunning switch-ups midway, they might be my two favorites. I imagine those who partake in…who partake, might find these tracks extra double transcendent. One might use the word climactic a bunch. I do think there’s an overall subtle pulse in that the pulse is subtle, until it’s not. The songs overall are very mellow and maybe kind of more sensual sounding than LP1, they’re down for a good stank face and maybe some hip action and kelp-like motion. The place where it is not, where it breaks in the most dramatic way, is Bending Hectic, which is perhaps what makes it such a standout in the context of the rest of the record.
Lyrically, the entire record feels more - and I say this lovingly and somewhat knowingly - paranoid. The eponymous track and Friend of a Friend seem cheery at times, but ultimately they wrap up with unanswered questions and speculation and some flavor of conspiracy. This entire work seems a little darker than A Light for Attracting Attention, maybe a little less hopeful or silver-lined? I’m not sure just yet. Alls I know is, I love it.
Maybe more to be added here, also maybe not.
Here’s more: I just watched Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly, and from over here it seems like Bending Hectic, my favorite on LP2, directly relates to that film (not to mention Hamlet, which I only just learned by way of a reddit post). The theme is…is it worth it? What makes it worth it? I’d also consider Turn! Turn! Turn! as relating back, considering the repeated “turn” in Bending Hectic, and the subject matter. Maybe that’s what makes BH so astonishing, it’s intense and dramatic, but ultimately (right?) he seems to choose life, as it ends with the lyrics “turn.” Another reddit-er noted that it’s a double entendre, considering he goes over the edge and lets go of the wheel (control) to find new life (love).
I also hear a lot of The Pop Group and King Crimson throughout Wall of Eyes (and other radiohead & radiohead-adjacent projects), the jams and grooves and atonal switcheroos.
