Cutouts

About

Given that it evolved from an urge to do something—anything—creative during the pandemic, The Smile has turned out to be one of the most liberating and fruitful projects of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s latter-day career. <i>Cutouts</i> is the third record in little more than two years from the trio, which also includes Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, and follows just 10 months after their captivating second album <i>Wall of Eyes</i>. Its creation mirrors the cross-pollination that occurred between a pair of classic Radiohead album. In much the same way that 2000’s <i>Kid A</i> and 2001’s <i>Amnesiac</i> were made during the same recording sessions but inhabited different sonic spaces and texture, <i>Cutouts</i> contains songs committed to tape at the same time as <i>Wall of Eyes</i> in Oxford and London’s Abbey Road Studios with producer Sam Petts-Davie. Whereas <i>Wall of Eyes</i> mesmerized with a tightly wound, autumnal restraint, there’s an unfurling expanse at work on <i>Cutouts</i>’ 10 track. With its cascading riff, soulful piano chord, and yearning vocal, “Eyes & Mouth” is the epic center around which everything else revolve. The record never settles in one spot for too long: “Instant Psalm,” featuring beatific strings from the London Contemporary Orchestra, is a hazy folk gem, and “The Slip” is a synth-laden banger, while the frantic punk-funk grooves of “Zero Sum” sound like they’re trying to wriggle out of themselve. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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