The Smile Without the Teeth

The supergroup reckons with a return to normal.

ONLY A DEADLY, momentum-throttling year like 2020 could have cleared enough schedules to make the Smile happen. When Radiohead was unable to convene, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood connected with the jazz drummer Tom Skinner to workshop new songs.

They debuted with 2022's A Light for Attracting Attention, a meatier album than the typical Radiohead offshoot, which tore into tricky rhythmic workouts, acerbic rockers, and somber folk songs, traversing their disconcerting landscape like doomsayers who've been warning of a coming catastrophe since the Clinton-Blair era. Their sophomore album, Wall of Eyes-released by Self Help Tapes on January 26-deepens the trio's chemistry and surveys a world that has yet to fully reckon with the trauma of the pandemic.

Like a Stygian passage from A Light's gloomy "Skrting on the Surface," Wall of Eyes floats in with worried observations about the present moment. The sultry "Teleharmonic" fusses about "whining drones." In the video for single "Friend of a Friend," the band faces off with a tough crowd: a room full of unimpressed children, suggesting that it takes more razzledazzle to turn our brains on than it used to. Yorke is not screaming at people in the streets to activate their humanity anymore.