Album Review: The Smile - Wall of Eyes

I’m pretty sure that Radiohead is done.

And, I mean, maybe I am wrong. I am not often a person who has a desperate need to be proven right about a lot of things, specifically with something such as this, and there is a part of me—the part of me that has been a fan of the band for nearly 30 years, that doesn’t wish to be correct. 

But, over the last few years—indeed, since the spring of 2021, when Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood announced they had formed a new band with jazz drummer Tom Skinner, I started to suspect that Radiohead, as an active or functioning group, had come to an end, or had run its course.

And, of course, I have made variations on the joke, over the last few years, even before Greenwood and Yorke announced their new project, The Smile—the joke being that Thom Yorke would rather start a new band than make another Radiohead album.

I mean, he did that already with the project Atoms For Peace—originally assembled in 2009 so he could perform material from his debut solo album, The Eraser, in a live setting. The project, including longtime Radiohead collaborator Nigel Godrich, and Flea, the often shirtless bass player from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, of all people, released their first, and at this time, only album, Amok, over a decade ago.

The joke being that Thom Yorke would rather release solo albums than make another Radiohead album, which he’s done, actually. The Eraser, released in 2006, came out at a strange time because it was eclipsed slightly by Radiohead’s summer tour, where they were testing out songs that would eventually turn up the following year on In Rainbows. In 2014, he released Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, and then five years later, Anima, which he did, at the time, intend to tour in support of, though plans for that were ultimately scrapped during 2020.

I’m pretty sure that Radiohead is done.

I will be sad, of course, if my pessimistic speculation turns out to be correct. And I would, of course, be surprised and delighted, if the five members of Radiohead did begin working together again on something new. 

But, if it is, in fact, the end, I suppose in the years that have elapsed since their last studio album, A Moon Shaped Pool—eight years wherein Yorke released a solo album, formed an entirely different band, and released not one but now two records with them, I have had an ample amount of time to prepare myself for this news.

That doesn’t mean I won’t be upset, or that it will be difficult to actually face that as a reality, as a fan of the band for nearly 30 years. But what I am saying is that there have been more abrupt breakups of things¹ I held dear that were unexpected, and that I will never truly move on from. 

I’m pretty sure that Radiohead is done—the group, a year after the release of A Moon Shaped Pool, celebrating the 20th anniversary of their landmark OK Computer through a self-released, lavish reissue; four years after that, marking the 21st and 20th (respectively) anniversaries of both Kid A and Amnesiac with a reissue package that was, comparatively, much less lavish in terms of what kind of ephemera it offered.

The band’s somewhat maligned sixth full-length, Hail to The Thief, an experiment of sorts—a bulk of it being recorded in a two-week period, rather than the long-gestating sessions that bore Kid A and Amnesiac, and also the band’s “L.A. album,” celebrated its 20th-anniversary last year, with no reissue of any size, lavish or otherwise, or real acknowledgment of the two decades that had come and gone since its original release, to be found.

I’m pretty sure that Radiohead is done.

And, I mean, the band, at various times in their career, had almost called it quits before—the recording sessions for OK Computer, and Kid A and Amnesiac were famously contentious and exhausting in terms of the pressure the members were putting on themselves, and the creative differences they were attempting to navigate. 

The band, too, had been advised at one point, by a member of their management, during early, less productive sessions for In Rainbows, working with a producer other than Nigel Godrich, who had helmed four of their records up to that point, that maybe they should just break up instead of trying to work through the difficulties they had encountered. 

Maybe I am wrong. 

I am not often a person who has a desperate need to be proven right about a lot of things, specifically something such as this, which is, at the end of the day, perhaps to you, the reader, something of little to no consequence, and there is a part of me that does not wish to be correct. 

*

When you are the frontman, or front person, or lead singer, for a group, and you are so synonymous with that group, it is hard, I think to step out from under that shadow in any direction to make a new identity for yourself as an artist. 

Thom Yorke’s voice, one of the most iconic and dynamic in range of the last few decades certainly—an otherworldly howl that time has been extremely kind to, is always going to be connected, whether he wants it to be or not, with his role as the lead vocalist or frontman for Radiohead. And the thing about Yorke’s output under his own name, or with Atoms For Peace, is that, yes, it is very much still his voice, but you can tell that what is happening around him is different, somehow. 

Atoms For Peace was an album that, apparently, was assembled through heavily editing and sequencing recordings from extended jam sessions between the group—giving it a very chaotic and slithering feeling at times, with rhythms and textures that are, comparatively and arguably quite a bit different than that of his day job. 

The same can be said for The Eraser, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, and Anima—The Eraser, perhaps through being the first of his solo outings, is the most cohesive and genuinely interesting and honestly memorable; regardless, all of these, without the input from four other people, lean heavily into Yorke’s interest in glitchy, jittery, electronic beats and atmospheres. 

So, then, what makes The Smile any different than Radiohead?

With both Yorke and Greenwood in The Smile, it is truly hard for them, I am sure, to figure out innovative or genuinely interesting ways in the effort of stepping out from under the shadow of the band they founded in the mid-1980s, but within The Smile’s 2022 debut full-length, A Light For Attracting Attention, and now with its follow up, Wall of Eyes, they have made noticeable and admirable strides to push themselves in directions of real distinction. 

At eight songs total, clocking in at 45 minutes, at first glance, it seems like Wall of Eyes is a somewhat spry affair, but that isn’t the case—not exactly. The running time of songs themselves is a little long—“Bending Hectic,” the first single the group released from the album, in 2023, is over eight minutes, with everything else averaging around five minutes in length, or over—which might not seem like a lot, but there is actually, a lot going on within the world of this album.

Wall of Eyes isn’t a difficult album, but it certainly is not an easy one. It’s not inaccessible to a casual listen—not exactly, but it is so very dense, and complex in its intricacies and arranging, it is an album that, because of its density and complexities, and borderline inaccessibility or at least the arm’s length it can keep you at sometimes, it is an album that does require patience and time.

It is an album that, even though, yes, the group had released three songs off it in advance of its arrival in full, practically requires you to listen to it from beginning to end, uninterrupted. A kind of weighty undertaking that can be intimating, but even when it falters (and it actually does at times), is worth the time and effort, and is always fascinating and thoughtful. 

Because in those noticeable and admirable strides to push themselves in directions of real distinction, Yorke, Greenwood, and Skinner have, at least with Wall of Eyes, found ways to incorporate elements of truly progressive guitar-driven music, with the feeling, or spirit of avant-garde jazz—a freedom and fearlessness of a band confident enough in their capabilities that, even when something doesn’t work, or doesn’t quite land in a way you’d like, the commitment and robust nature of the sound, as a whole, is impressive nevertheless. 

*

And because Wall of Eyes is such a dense, complicated album that is truly intended to be listened to uninterrupted, as a whole, it does not necessarily need to be an album that is concerned about the idea of playing its hand too soon in terms of a balance between structure and accessibility. 

The truth is that balance and accessibility are probably not a concern at all for an album like this—one that can, admittedly, be a little sleepy at times or slow and has a penchant for wandering into self-indulgent territory. 

But, comparatively—like, from song to song, and how the album is sequenced, it does, in a sense, play its hand too soon (and that’s okay) by placing two of the least challenging, more accessible to a casual listen, and genuinely interesting songs right at the top. Songs that are extremely layered and intricate still, certainly, but can be enjoyed outside of the context of the record something insular. 

The opening and titular track, which shuffles around quietly within a sense of simmering, eerie tension, sets a surprisingly different tone from the way that A Light For Attracting Attention began, with the tense, ominous writing of warm, vintage-sounding synthesizers waiting to swallow each other whole of “The Same.” Here, on “Wall of Eyes,” The Smile barely rises above a whisper—there’s a hushed, understated percussive pattern that ripples underneath and keeps the rhythm going for the gently strummed acoustic guitar. 

It doesn’t sound like there is a lot going on, at first, with “Wall of Eyes,” but what makes it interesting, as the introductory track to the album, is how it is very deliberate—slowly luring you in further and further and revealing more layers as the song continues, like the dissonant guitar noodling that comes in toward the end, the chilling, eerie string accompaniment that does slice sharply through the otherwise gentle fabric of the song, and the subtle bursts of what sound like, and are presumably intended to replicate, small explosions.

And I think that there is an argument, or a belief, or perhaps it is a little bit of a smirking joke of some kind, that since OK Computer, and I hesitate to say this because it isn’t true, but that Thom Yorke’s lyrics aren’t about “anything.” They are vivid certainly, but often terribly cryptic and ambiguous—relying, at times, not the repetition of phrases or very specific lines to kind of pull the listener through. 

It’s not that they aren’t about “anything.” It’s just that they are hard to decipher, or analyze than  one might able to, or more inclined to do, with the writing from a more traditional pop song.

There is no shortage of cryptic, vague, haunting phrase turns across Wall of Eyes, and there are plenty of them in the title track, with Yorke’s voice sounding distant and spectral, coated in a cavernous kind of reverb that creates an effect like he is just floating above what is gently swirling around below him.

There is something menacing, or at least foreboding, in the skeletal lyrical framework of “Wall of Eyes.” “Down a peg or two, you’ll go behind a wall of eyes, of your own device,” Yorke sings quietly. “Is that still you with the hollow eyes?”

Something about Yorke as a songwriter that has fascinated me for years is the way he holds onto and repurposes phrases—the first one that comes to mind is, “I don’t know why I feel so tongue-tied. I don’t know why I feel so skinned alive,” which was used in the chorus to both “Cuttooth,” a standout b-side from Amnesiac, then, two years later, in the scuzzy, frenetic Hail to The Thief track “Myxomatosis.” 

These expressions—repurposed, or hung onto until the right time—aren’t always even from songs that have been recorded. In “Wall of Eyes,” within the second verse, a large portion of it can be found in artwork from the elaborate packaging to Radiohead’s 2011 King of Limbs—“Let us raise our glasses to what we don’t deserve—what we’re not worthy of.”

“So rich and wide,” Yorke continues, his voice soaring to just the right level. “To the grains of sand slipping through our hands.”

The second track, “Teleharmonic,” operates from a similar place of restraint, musically, in terms of the members of The Smile piling on the layers of atmosphere and sound, but never letting go of the slow simmering tension they wish to create; and the lyrics are even more ambiguous, but also paint a much bleaker portrait in its phrasing.

In that layer of tension, though, with the slow-moving layers of atmosphere and sound, “Teleharmonic” is actually one of the more inherently beautiful songs on Wall of Eyes—one less concerned with the theatricality and technical abilities of the members of The Smile, focusing more on a viscerally somber tone which creates a sense of gloomy melancholy that lingers well after the song has ended.

“Teleharmonic” begins with the bending of a warm, but wonky synthesizer sound—Yorke and Greenwood, both in Radiohead, and here with The Smile, nearly always favoring the rich sound of vintage, analog synthesizer tones. This lower tone, as it bends, is then met with a tone slighter higher in register, both of which swirl around gently, dizzyingly, while Tom Skinner’s gentle percussive rhythm, which eventually picks up to a shuffle, moves around unassumingly underneath. 

And I had, originally, when taking notes during my second listen to Wall of Eyes, I had said that “Teleharmonic” was “uninspiring.” Which isn’t true, I guess. Or, at least, my opinion on it has changed. And that’s the thing about this album is that, even when a song doesn’t exactly work, or isn't exactly one of my favorites, or a “stand out,” or whatever, it does require time and patience, and things honestly reveal themselves to you, as a listener, within that time spent sitting with it intently. 

“Teleharmonic” is not uninspired, but it does come from a place of restraint—but in that restraint, there are these huge flourishes of somber beauty. There is a moment when things really build—a small cacophony of warbled, distorted vocals, and clattering of cymbals, and then a thick, rolling bass line that surges through the other layers of instrumentation.

Yorke’s voice, like it was on “Wall of Eyes,” is distant—fragile or gentle, coated in a cavernous reverb, for a bulk of “Teleharmonic,” and his lyrics here are chilling and somber. “Will I make the morning?,” he asks in the opening line. “I don’t know,” he continues, answering his own question. “Tied up in half-truths…wanting payback.”

And it makes sense, I think, that the further The Smile takes us into the song, the somber feeling that they conjure with ease creates a terrible, palpable sensation of loneliness—this is amplified by the fragmented descriptions within the lyrics, with Yorke singing of a cold sea and fishing dragnets. 

“Where are you taking me,” he implores at the end of the second verse, though the question is not answered, and there is an assurance, of slight, in what serves as the chorus to “Teleharmonic,” where he sings, “Somewhere you’ll be there.”

Yorke does break the reserve, and the tension, at least within his voice, near the end of the song, when he blurts out, with emphasis, “Bury me,” his voice reaching a place that it had not yet within the album’s sequencing. “In the way out,” he continues, before taking a surprising and stark religious allusion. “Oh, Lord, how should I forget? Hung up—pinned up by hammer and nails.”

*

Often, within the work of both Radiohead and now The Smile certainly, you get the impression that even with the amount of layering that is done, or post-production work or effects that have been employed to achieve the end result, there are moments of a closeness, or an intimacy in sound, that reveals it is really a group of people playing in a room together.

There were a handful of moments of that on A Light For Attracting Attention—moments where you could feel that kind of connection and energy. And there are certainly places on Wall of Eyes where you can feel that energy and connection between Skinner, Greenwood, and Yorke, but parts of what make this album as genuinely interesting as it is to listen to, and just kind of experience from beginning to end, are the places where things have been layered, or overdubbed, or tinkered with in post-production.

The open line to “I Quit,” which is tucked early in Wall of Eyes’ second half, might not be Yorke’s finest couplet—“I quit, my head is lit”—but the song itself, at least in terms of how it is assembled and the collision of sounds and tones housed within, is among the record’s most compelling and memorable. 

“I Quit” opens with a skittering, chopped up, bouncing acoustic guitar sound that ping pongs in and out of big, open, mournful piano chords (chords that are very similar, honestly, to the piano progressions throughout A Light as well as Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool—Yorke and Greenwood obviously have a comfort zone in sound and chords on the instrument, and that is okay, I suppose) before the percussion comes in—here, too, Skinner’s drumming is unassuming, never rising above a certain intensity, and mostly serving as a means of creating a rhythm that connects the piano and guitar sound, rumbling and clattering with the slightest trace of an echo.

And there are times, admittedly, and perhaps it is because Greenwood and Yorke, playing off of each other for close to 40 years now, when The Smile—and certainly on this record, can become self-indulgent in its arranging, or perhaps, the two opt to show off, rather than show out.

The showing off is pretty noticeable—I mean, that’s kind of the point. And you can hear it in the intricate, dexterous guitar work that begins “Under Our Pillows,” which, as Greenwood and Yorke, as composers, fall into similar patterns on the piano, this guitar progression, surprisingly, sounds very reminiscent (perhaps intentionally so) of the opening to “Thin Thing,” from A Light For Attracting Attention.

And there is a bit of showing off, or a little grandstanding; the further into “I Quit” we are guided, there is a brief moment, where the showing off, in just one additional layer—in-between the sweeping, dramatic strings, piano, chopped up guitar, and percussion, there is this dissonant burst of a synthesizer that comes squonking in, just as little after two minutes in. 

It doesn’t take away from the song exactly, but it also doesn’t add anything else remarkable to it either—one more sound, fighting for space and recognition within all of the other elements, oscillating and swaying around. 

*

The Smile, as a band, and the kind of songs that they opt to record, is fascinating in the sense that, yes, because of Yorke and Greenwood’s experience within the context of Radiohead, there are certain elements that do carry over from one group to the other—the mournful or somber, and the sweeping dramatics. There are different elements, though, arguably, that are unique to their work with Skinner, within The Smile—the post-punk brashness of their earliest single, “You Will Never Work In Television Again,” and the equally as raucous “We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings” were, comparatively with the songs featured on Wall of Eyes, facets of the band that they were not interested in exploring further. Here, there is nothing nearly as frenetic and explosive, and even when this album does edge out of its comfort zone slightly, it is never to that kind of an extreme, sonically speaking.

Wall of Eyes’ penultimate track, “Bending Hectic,” was originally released as a seemingly one-off single, roughly a year after the arrival of A Light For Attracting Attention, and around seven months ahead of its appearance within the context of this album. Sprawling—all of eight minutes in length—it is not the total exercise in patience and focus that one might think with that long of a running time (it is the longest track on the album), and even in how it slowly, slowly unravels itself, seemingly meandering or without a true direction at first, there is a kind of “showing off” to it as well. Not one that comes from a boastful, “Look at how proficient I am at this instrument” or a “Aren’t you amazed by how many layers of sound are crammed into this one song,” but rather a type of haughty confidence. 

Within that self-indulgence, there is a smirking, “How impressed are you that we can sustain an idea for this long.”

The truth is that, even with as much of an eye roll as an eight minute, slow burning, moody song like “Bending Hectic” is at first glance, it is impressive—the very deliberate way in which it builds and builds, until it does burst apart at the seams. It does need all of those eight minutes to reach that point, and in how it does arrive at its conclusion does make for the most powerful, or genuinely moving moment on Wall of Eyes.

Yorke, famously, as a writer, has a dislike of automobiles—he made that known in one of the band’s earliest b-sides, “Killer Cars,” and howled in the opening track of OK Computer, that an airbag saved his life. On “Bending Hectic,” as the verses unfold just about as slowly and deliberately as the music that underscores it, he, in poetic, yet detached detail, describes a vintage car careening off the side of a mountain in Italy.

It’s bleak, yes, and the phrases he uses honestly just describe the minimum of what is happening within the narrative, but there is something surprisingly impactful about it. “Time is kind of frozen,” he says quietly in a lower register, in the second verse. “As you’re gazing at the view. And I swear I’m seeing double.”

And, as if describing the imminent doom of driving a car off of a mountainside road weren’t enough, the song then takes an inward, nihilistic turn as it heads toward the chorus. “I’m letting go of the wheel. It might be as well.”

This isn’t even the halfway point of “Bending Hectic,” but it is where the flourishes that have been accompanying Yorke’s vocals reach the first peak within the structure of the song, as lush, glacially paced, strings come creeping in, swirling around with warm cascades of the electric guitar strings, and the song starts to find a little more order, or rhythm, with Skinner’s gentle percussion taking just a little more shape.\

And it is, shortly after the halfway point, after another utterance of “I’m letting go of the wheel,” the strings become less lush, and warm, and much more terrifying and unsettling as they overpower everything, and the band kicks into a much more intense, aggressive, and brash sounding run through the chorus, with a snarl in both Yorke’s voice, as well as a ferocity to the punch of the snare drum and the noisy, distorted crunch of the guitar.

It is a moment like none other on the album, or even anything found on its predecessor—and Yorke and Greenwood haven’t been that viscerally unhinged and noisy together in a very, very long time. Impressive and cathartic, and even with the build-up leading to this point in the song, it is a welcome surprise and exhalation when everything is magnified and explosive. 

“Despite these slings,” Yorke sings, his voice reaching his iconic higher range. “Despite these arrows. I’ll force myself to turn,” he continues, with the final word of the song, “Turn,” being repeated, seemingly of a sense of desperation, or a means of trying to convince himself of something he is uninterested in accepting. 

*

And it is at this point, slightly over 4,000 words in, where, if you will humor me, and allow me, I would like to break the fourth wall. Because admittedly, as I have sat with Wall of Eyes, as I write this, for roughly a week, collecting my thoughts on it, I have slowly come to the understanding that there has been something (well, maybe more than one thing) preventing me from truly enjoying it, or embracing it, as much as I perhaps first anticipated I would. 

And maybe it is the fact that it, as a whole, is a dense, sleepier kind of album, overall lacking in the ramshackle exuberance that A Light For Attracting Attention had sprinkled throughout as a means of pulling the momentum back up when it began dipping. And maybe that is a barrier of sorts, or makes it the kind of album that I might not be in the right frame of mind to listen to casually.

For as impressive as it can be, and for as moving as portions of it are capable of becoming, it is a big ask of a listener, in terms of focus in the kind of tone it sets, and mood it wants you to be in to receive it.

Or, perhaps that it is, because, at this moment, approaching a week after the album’s release, the copy that I ordered of this album from The Smile’s label, XL, has not yet arrived in my home—a trifling matter, honestly, but one that does, unfortunately, impact how I feel about an album. 

I have this thing, you see, that has become more of a thing over the last four or five years, where, in writing about an album, I do literally need to sit down with it, and listen to it on the turntable—my preference is not to stream it on my phone, or to listen to whatever I have downloaded onto my laptop. I require, and this is some kind of idiosyncratic quirk of mine that has caused, over time, my record collection to balloon and is certainly one of my least charming qualities, a physical copy of the album and the actual act of listening from the stereo.

I wish I could break this habit a little easier, honestly, and be able to have the kind of immersive experience I want with an album only listening through headphones on my computer. 

But, you see, my copy of Wall of Eyes has yet to arrive in my home.

The package, if I was following the tracking information correctly, made it to the distribution hub in St. Paul, Minnesota—less than an hour from where I live—before it was first erroneously shipped to Iowa, then again back to St Paul, before ending up in California, where it currently sits.

And if it does arrive, will I even enjoy the experience of placing it on my turntable? 

Or will I begrudgingly listen to it only a few times before shuffling it away in the “S” section of my record collection, and always associate it with this bizarre, maddening, but ultimately meaningless experience.

Or, maybe it’s something else. Something much larger and more troubling that makes me hesitant to listen more than I have to prepare for this review.

And this is something that I was uncertain how to discuss when I wrote about The Smile in the summer of 2021, upon the release of A Light For Attracting Attention—it was ultimately something that I placed as a footnote, simply because it was something that was on my mind, while I wrote about the album, but was just not sure what to do with, in terms of the best way of presenting the information.

And it is something that I am still uncertain how to discuss, and quite honestly, it is something that I do not even remember how I happened across. 

Radiohead has, at times, been a very political band—not loudly outspoken, but they have made their politics known, specifically in 2003, with Hail to The Thief, and, later, rallying efforts against climate change, supporting Greenpeace. But they were also met with criticism for their decision to play a concert in Tel Aviv in 2017, near the end of their tour in support of A Moon Shaped Pool.

The criticism came from the BDS movement—Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, which calls, per an article in “Rolling Stone,” for a complete cultural boycott of Israel until Palestinians are granted the right of return and Israel’s West Bank barrier is dismantled.

I tell you all of that to tell you this.

At some point, prior to writing about A Light For Attracting Attention, I came across something online that said Jonny Greenwood was, perhaps, transphobic, or at the very least, had “liked” a tweet that was anti-transgender in nature. In doing a little bit more bit more looking, there was a lot of information on Reddit about Greenwood’s spouse, Sharona Katan, and her troubling views, specifically that she was anti-vax. 

And at the time, I wondered how much of her sentiments about the pandemic, and public safety, he, or anyone else within Radiohead or The Smile, agreed with.

I tell you all of that to tell you this.

Wall of Eyes’ second half begins with the wandering, swaying, piano-driven “Friend of A Friend,” which is the album’s most overtly political song. The band itself, strangely, was a result of the lockdown during the pandemic—though, how three people felt compelled to get together and start a new band when there was a lockdown, I have yet to totally understand. 

But, regardless, Wall of Eyes features songs that the group did write around the time of their inception, and they are still working through those ideas. And one of those ideas is a song about the pandemic, or, at least, a song that is a response to how the pandemic was handled, apparently, has made its way onto this record. 

“Friend of A Friend” is that song.

Lyrically, it is tough to surmise how much of “Friend of A Friend” is Yorke, himself, or how much of it is a character—whoever the protagonist is, there is a frustration that reverberates through a sense of loneliness and the expected isolation that came from living through 2020, into 2021. 

Over a thick, and rolling bass line, there is a sardonic nature to the opening line of the song: “I can go anywhere I want—I just gotta turn myself inside out, and back to front.”

The frustration continues to grow, the further into the song the band takes us. “All the window balconies, they seem so flimsy as our friends step out to talk and wave and catch a piece of the sun,” calling to mind the images of, early on in the pandemic, when people were standing outside on their balconies, performing music for one another, or attempting conversations, as a means of trying to remain connected when they were asked to stay inside.

And it is within the second verse where the line between character and personal narrative and reflection, begins to blur—the biting tone of, “I guess I believe in an altered state where they leave their windows and their doors open wide,” followed by a line that was, apparently, changed between the time it was originally performed live, early in the band’s career, until now. 

“Here, the telephone lines are always busy, unable to give a reason or a straight answer,” Yorke sings, with the original lyric having been, “Ones repeating we should stay indoors.”

Musically, at least until the ending, which is the most accusatory, “Friend of A Friend” offsets its lyricism and observations through an honestly playful and, at times sunny sounding arrangement—the drumming is relaxed and shuffling, and the piano is far less mournful here than it is literally anywhere else on Wall of Eyes. And in its playful nature, it does shift momentum and tempo often, with moments where things slow down and then collide together again in a rush, specifically in the moments right before the chorus, accompanied by a saxophone throughout a bulk of it, as well as a string arrangement that slides in around the second verse.

Everything reaches a climax as “Friend of A Friend” arrives in its final moments, where it doesn’t become more somber than the rest of the song, but there is a real seriousness, or menace, that comes through, with a pointing finger at the misappropriation of government funds and contracts during the shortage of personal protective equipment in 2020. 

“All of that money—where did it go?,” Yorke asks pointedly. “In somebody’s pocket. A friend of a friend.”

I don’t doubt that funds were misused or misappropriated, or that questionable deals were struck between the government and private businesses, so Yorke is in the right, here, for inquiring. 

However, it is the rest of the song, or what it might imply, that I worry about, in terms of pandemic denier sentiments. 

I tell you all of that to tell you this.

Things are bad out there, in the world at large. There is a genocide occurring amongst the people of Palestine, and currently, Sharona Katan spends her days retweeting vehemently anti-Palestinian posts.

I tell you all of that to tell you this.

Trying to separate the art from the artist has never been easy, but especially now, there are times when it seems impossible to reconcile. 

And that is where I find myself, now, quickly approaching 6,000 words about Wall of Eyes—an album that a majority of is genuinely interesting, albeit a little less accessible of enthusiastic of a listen comparatively to both the work of Radiohead, but certainly its predecessor A Light for Attracting Attention. But even for as genuinely interesting or captivating or well made as this album is, and as much as I might feel like I should be returning to it, as such a long-time fan of Radiohead and Radiohead adjacent projects, I am admittedly hesitant because there are things that are not sitting right with me.

I tell you all of that to tell you this. How do you separate the art from the person who makes it, if you even can. 

And how bad is this, though? Because there are certainly levels to bad, when it comes to public figures, and their actions, regardless of how private the members of Radiohead try to keep myriad facets of their lives. 

And how bad is this, though? And how much of it is just speculation on the part of Radiohead subreddits, and my own speculation and concern.

We want “famous people,” or at least artists that we look up to, and admire, for whatever reason, to be flawless, and to hold the same unwavering beliefs or morals that we do, but the reality is that we cannot do that. We can admire. We can listen, or read, or watch. But we have to admit, or realize, or understand, that we are all flawed somehow.

“When celebrities—specifically people that are known in public hurt my feelings, I try to humanize them,” my friend Alyssa told me, when I tried my best to articulate what I was experiencing and what I was trying to wrap my head around, and ultimately write myself out of the corner I found myself in.

But there are no easy answers. And no right or wrong answers. 

We try to find a way to look beyond as best as we are able, if we are able.

In an example that Alyssa provided me, she said that in watching videos from a specific internet personality who had a very public fall from grace in 2023, is a means of nostalgia for “the version of yourself that was blissfully unaware that people are bad.”

I tell you all of that to tell you this, because I think about the version of myself, from 30 years ago, that heard “Creep” for the first time on MTV. I think about me, age 12, absolutely transfixed by what I was hearing, and what I was watching, when I saw the videos for Radiohead’s singles from The Bends. 

I think about the version of me, an overweight, sullen teenager who bought OK Computer the day it came out and was absolutely blown away by the very first notes I heard coming through the headphones of my portable CD player.

We work to humanize, as we are able, if we are able. And maybe in that humanization, there is, at least for me, more of an opportunity to understand that people are bad, yes, but we continue to try and reconcile as we are able, if we are able.

*

I’m pretty sure that Radiohead is done.

And I do hope that I am incorrect about this assumption I have been making for some time now. And if I am right, though, or if my suspicious were accurate, there are certainly longtime fans of the band who might see Yorke and Greenwood’s work with The Smile as a worthwhile, if not a worthy successor, just in terms of keeping some of the spirit, or the feeling, alive. 

I would say it is a successor, sure, but is it worth it? I think, if anything, The Smile, as a project, is not the successor to Radiohead we want, or need, but it is the one that we have, currently, been provided, and perhaps, the one that we might, as listeners, for better or for worse, deserve.

And in this being the successor that we have been provided, currently, we, as listeners, or fans, have to come to a slow acceptance or understanding. The same way that, currently, I, with the trepidation and concern that I have, find myself in a place where I have to have the slow acceptance or understanding and humanize the members of The Smile, and their spouses, certainly. And remember what it was that drew me to Radiohead, initially, when I was so very young, and what has kept me connected to them, and growing with them as I have been able to, through more than half of my life.

And I have, of course, spent much more time in this, reflecting on my feelings about the members of The Smile, and their politics, than perhaps I should have, and maybe, just maybe, it would have behooved me to reflect more on the music housed within Wall of Eyes. It is, at the end of the day, a complicated and, at times, a difficult album, fittingly made by complicated and at times difficult individuals. And for as much as we want to think that people are good, or that people we look up to, or admire, for whatever reason, hold the same beliefs that we do, that is simply not possible.

An album like Wall of Eyes, and a project like The Smile, though, are doing their job, though, or at least, do something similar to what happens when I put on older Radiohead records, like The Bends or OK Computer, or Kid A, or In Rainbows. There is the element of nostalgia, or familiarity, or comfort. Here, there are still flashes of brilliance, or moments of wonder, that are invigorating, and do serve as a reminder of why I am still compelled, and why I was compelled by it in the first place. 

^{1- I will never get over Desus Nice and The Kid Mero splitting up their partnership. Like I think that is more hurtful and upsetting to me personally than if Radiohead were to officially announce they were done.}  

Wall of Eyes is out now via XL.