Thom Yorke performing with The Smile at All Points East in London on August 28th, 2022 (Adam Hampton-Matthews for Live4ever)
The Smile have also announced a March 2024 European tour.
The Smile will release their new album Wall Of Eyes on January 24th next year after sessions at Abbey Road when collaborations with Sam Petts-Davies and the London Contemporary Orchestra were resumed.
It’s Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner’s follow-up to A Light For Attracting Attention – one of our albums of 2022 – and is being previewed with a video for the title-track directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
“The ethereal piano on Pana-Vision is complemented by effectively used brass and strings, further prodding the anxiety levels, while on the beautiful Speech Bubbles the orchestra (the London Contemporary, no less) drift in and out of the song, as if momentarily moved to contribute before retreating into the darkness,” our A Light For Attracting Attention review reads.
“As a jazz drummer, Tom Skinner operates in a different sphere than Philip Selway and provides a specific looseness but, so proficient is the latter, that the difference is minimal.”
As he enters the fray on second track The Opposite, he and Greenwood’s swirling guitar timbres work in tandem to brood along with Yorke, while Skrting On The Surface (‘when we realise we are broken, nothing mends’) feels like a laconic and organic jam were it not for his methodical and precise skin work.
Wall Of Eyes tracklist:
Wall Of Eyes
Teleharmonic
Read The Room
Under Our Pillows
Friend Of A Friend
I Quit
Bending Hectic
You Know Me!
Tour dates:
March 2024
7 Dublin, 3Arena
13 Copenhagen, K.B. Hallen
15 Brussels, Forest National
16 Amsterdam, AFAS Live
18 Brighton Centre
19 Manchester, O2 Apollo
20 Glasgow, SEC
22 Birmingham, O2 Academy
23 London, Alexandra Palace