Wall of Eyes

Wall of Eyes is a kaleidoscopic, mind-altering pronouncement: The Smile are not a band of their component parts, not echoes of their previous ventures. They are something exciting, ambitious, and genuinely brilliant; a sentiment delivered so resoundingly by their work here that it will leave your ears ringing.

Wall of Eyes is just as good an effort as any Radiohead album, and rivals the work its members have done in other projects. It’s a complete joy to watch these artists work, for their creative expression is a treasure.

It may only be eight tracks long, but each song contains so much invention and ideas that repeated listens bring their own rewards. As the seemingly interminable wait for a new Radiohead album goes on, The Smile are making music that, at times, is equally extraordinary.

The Smile take Radiohead’s privileges seriously, rewarding our attention with music that demands and – crucially – holds it. No frills, no distractions. A little like Radiohead, then; but there’s nothing wrong with that. [Feb 2024, p.29]

Like A Moon Shaped Pool and Suspiria, Wall of Eyes is moodier and more sparse, like how a tree is in the winter. The tracks are like long branches stretching out, each textured by their own idiosyncrasies, complications and sonic movements, but are still clearly part of the same root.

After the debut’s big bang, Wall of Eyes connects the particles into somewhere you, and perhaps these restless musicians, might like to make a home.

Wall of Eyes is the sound of a more confident, collaborative The Smile, a version of the band willing to let their ideas ferment, even at the expense of immediacy.

Quality workmanship. [Mar 2024, p.82]

With its new LP, the Smile makes itself increasingly elusive. It’s now a band intent on destabilizing structures and dissolving expectations. .... They’re not about hooks or choruses. Melodies recur while arrangements change radically around them; songs suddenly leap into entirely new territory. .... Throughout the album, the Smile’s music feels molten and improvisatory, though it’s clearly premeditated.

It sits comfortably in the middle of the vast catalogue of albums released by Radiohead and its members. It’s reassuring to hear that, 35 years after the start of their artistic journey, these musicians can still come up with compositions this elegant and exciting.

Wall of Eyes comes across as a more cohesive project than its older, wilder sibling. Its pace is unhurried, and its songs favor compositional restraint over sheer energy.

Wall of Eyes comprises just eight tracks but it’s far from slight. String arrangements by the London Contemporary Orchestra add a lush cinematic quality to the album.

The Smile take more risks with this follow-up, resulting in a gorgeous, sometimes difficult trip into the unknown that, if only briefly, can make you forget about their main gig.

A record of real depth, ‘Wall Of Eyes’ closes on a sombre note. Distinctive, melodic, and defined, ‘You Know Me’ doesn’t so much pull at the heartstrings as slice right through them, Thom Yorke’s voice dissolving into a mesh of strings. It’s a suitably potent moment to end the record on – poised and suggestive, it becomes a bridge from one phase, to something as yet uncharted.

‘Friend of a Friend’ is an oasis of normality on this album, providing a piano ballad that could easily be a Neil Young deep cut, but for the most part this album is exactly what a side project should be – all the ideas too weird to fit anywhere else.

Whether Wall of Eyes is a last stop for the Smile or merely a layover to some yet-undefined place, it’s an undeniably mesmerizing trip.

Where previously the comparisons to their Radiohead catalogue could warp expectations, the breadth of the material on offer here suggest that it could, eventually, flip that dynamic right on its head.

The Smile are back with Wall of Eyes, a lavishly gorgeous second LP. No one is going to convene a Deep Listening Consortium to unpack its meaning, and that’s part of the appeal. This music drifts, and we drift with it.

[Bending Hectic is] one of the best things Yorke and Greenwood have put their names to in at least a decade. Like the rest of Wall of Eyes, it really doesn’t feel interstitial, like a placeholder until the definite article reappears. What that portends for Radiohead’s future – if anything – is arguable; the album’s quality is not.

The subtle, unfurling I Quit, meanwhile, marries guitar, piano and percussion to create an arpeggiating Doppler effect strafed by electronics. “This is my stop, this is the end of the trip,” sings Yorke. In the same breath he’s ruminating on “conscience” and “brotherhood” and “a new path out of the madness, to wherever it goes”. That path may well be shaped like a smile.

All in all, less immediate and traditionally melodic than A Light…, Wall Of Eyes is one for the heads, revealing its many charms and details only upon repeated listens. [Mar 2024, p.83]

While Wall of Eyes captures the trio at their most musically freewheeling, it also loses the ordered potency of A Light for Attracting Attention. Yorke himself has also reverted to themes of self-identity more cryptically, making less of an impact compared to his sardonic candor identifying with the everyday anxieties of living in the outside world's structured chaos. Still, it's clear that The Smile operates on their own accord.

If A Light for Attracting Attention felt like a perhaps unnecessary but strong redux of a Radiohead album (A Moon Shaped Pool, specifically), then Wall of Eyes feels like an album Radiohead never made here on Earth, even if they could’ve conceivably done so in an alternate dimension. That’s progress.

Compared to its predecessor, Wall of Eyes can’t help but come across as transitional. While there are some undeniably great moments, the overall experience feels a little low-stakes and disappointing.

Wall of Eyes is an album of background music, a cinematic compilation that feels like a collection of songs that just weren’t good enough to be on its predecessor. It’s too jammy, too undercooked, too unedited — an overextended comedown without the requisite high.