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The Smile's 'A Light for Attracting Attention' extends and enriches the Radiohead canon
Prahlad Srihari
19 May 2022 07:30:AM
The Smile, 'A Light For Attracting Attention' yellow vinyl edition. Image via r/VinylReleases
For the kind of fans whose love for Radiohead only intensified post-Kid A, A Light For Attracting Attention makes for another endlessly replayable and invariably bracing catalogue of melodic affirmations about anxiety, sadness and alienation as well as denunciations of the global political hegemony.
The anticipation of a new record adds its own allure to an artist. Especially with a reliable long-hauler like Radiohead, the waiting period spent fantasising about what new melancholic delights lie on the horizon can often be its own reward. For the completists, the flurry of excitement over B-sides or even a side project never diminishes, only reinforces the artist's force field. A Light for Attracting Attention, the debut full-length record by The Smile, does no less. The new musical project, led by the Oxfordshire band's creative nexus, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, with London jazz collective Sons of Kemet's drummer Tom Skinner, extends and enriches the Radiohead canon.
For a supergroup, The Smile creates echoes without clashing egos, as each member's individual fixations are grounded by a shared artistic ethos. The baker's dozen of tracks are a work of precise songcraft, calibrated kinetics and clockwork alignment. Not a note is misspent. Not a word is out of place. Not once is there too much or too little of anything. Hooks drape Yorke's sepulchral croon in a cosmic shroud and burrow into the consciousness. Chord progressions hold a sense of mystery in songs that seem to luxuriate in space and time. Strings by the London Contemporary Orchestra and a brass section made up of some of the UK's finest jazz musicians are in complete organic lockstep with the trio's mindful invention, and only expand the cinematic scope of the album's spectral harmonies. The emotions, rhythms and the ideas behind each track coalesce to leave vivid afterimages. With each listen, as you chart the notes and words of its vaporous melodies, and find unmapped spaces, the album's emotional reality syncs with your own. Once you reach the end, another mood, a new meaning, a fresh clarity reveal themselves. So, all you want to do is play it again. Listen to it a dozen times: it is the kind of subliminal record that seeps into your bloodstream and acts as a beta-blocker.
Radiohead's shadow does loom over the album. "We Don't Know What Tomorrow Brings" and "The Smoke" strive for a mood that evoke Hail to the Thief, as a similar undercurrent of paranoia runs through them. "You Will Never Work in Television Again" recalls the energetic heights of "2 + 2 = 5." The delicate instrumentation of "Speech Bubbles," "Open the Floodgates" and "Skrting on the Surface" aches and uplifts at the same time like something out of In Rainbows. The fuzzy synth DNA of "Waving a White Flag" can be traced back to Kid A. "Pana-vision" is a piano ballad that recalls Amnesia. All 13 tracks possess a focused yet expansive quality of any Radiohead album, but also possess the scope and self-sufficiency to allow The Smile to stand on their own. This is a distinctive work stitched together like a dream to keep any seams from showing. This isn't a work of artists caught reliving past triumphs, but that of artists extending their experimental verve and renewing their focus towards newer aspirations. The trio have an inviting synergy that makes this side project a welcome waystation to bigger things, if not a radical departure.
If we have learnt anything from Greenwood's filmic excursions, it's that he has a penchant for the orchestral reprise and swirling atmospherics — a fine fit for Yorke's falsetto which floats from earthly to ethereal. While Skinner brings the same percussive fluidity as Radiohead drummer Philip Selway, he is more than just a caffeinated stand-in. "Thin Things" is a great example of the syncopations he brings to the table. A Jaki Liebezeit-styled drumbeat combines with a delicious synth-line to settle into a groove of otherworldly splendour. The textures he brings to "The Opposite" with the breakbeat give such a sharpness to the guitar riff and the electronic wobble, you are not sure if you are listening to a live performance or a studio production. Credit for that must also go to Nigel Godrich, Radiohead's long-term collaborator whose production gives space for each member's experimental inclinations to breathe. He makes for an ideal foil, balancing dynamic shifts with stasis, modulating the timbre of a note, and maximising the effect of the musician's respective contributions.
The 13 melodies are replete with note-worthy alchemical moments: the majestic orchestration that breaks through the contemplative calm of a piano waltz in "Pana-vision"; the waves of broodsome strings that wash over and retreat in "Free in the Knowledge" and "Speech Bubbles"; the guitar arpeggios and synthesiser bloops that combine to bring a glow to the gloomy piano in "Open the Floodgates"; the pulsing synth in the album opener "The Same"; the anxious rush to the riff, beats and vocals in "You Will Never Work in Television Again"; the funkadelic bass groove in "The Smoke"; the rumbling bass under a fog of synths in "We Don't Know What Tomorrow Brings"; the divine chord progression in "Thin Things"; and the eerie calm conjured by Yorke's falsetto in "A Hairdryer".
During the Glastonbury Live at Worthy Farm livestream, when Yorke spoke of the project, he explained the name (inspired by a Ted Hughes poem) was "not the smile as in 'ahh', more the smile as in the guy who lies to you every day." Expectedly, lies and deception of those who abuse power lurk behind the words of many tracks. Yorke sings of "elected billionaires" ("The Opposite") and "a face using fear to try to keep control" ("Free in the knowledge"). "You Will Never Work in Television Again" presumably takes aim at all the men outed by #MeToo: "All thosе beautiful young hopes and dreams, devoured by those evil eyes and those piggy limbs." Lyrics are as evocative as enigmatic. "Speech Bubbles" rings another warning bell about the environment: "Devastation has come/ Left in a station with a note upon/ Now there's never any place/ Never any place to put my feet back down." Not all songs are humid with despair. "Free in the knowledge" begins and ends on a hopeful note, "That one day this will end" and "We're in this together." Yorke also gets cheeky, taking a dig at the kind of fans who weren't too happy with the brooding, experimental direction the band took starting with Kid A. "Don't bore us – get to the chorus," he echoes their complaints in irony on "Open The Floodgates". "We want the good bits/ Without the bullshit/ And no heartache."
For the kind of fans whose love for Radiohead only intensified post-Kid A, A Light For Attracting Attention makes for another endlessly replayable and invariably bracing catalogue of melodic affirmations about anxiety, sadness and alienation as well as denunciations of the global political hegemony. Even if The Smile isn't defiantly charging into musical territories already charted by Radiohead, it only suggests this is a project alive with possibilities.
The anticipation for whatever comes next in the Radiohead extended universe has already begun.
Stream A Light for Attracting Attention here. Physical pre-orders here.
Published: 19 May 2022 07:30:AM
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