In Ted Hughes’ 1970 Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow literary work, the titular protagonist soars through our fraught universe seeking answers to the knotted moral contradictions which torment him, and the author. Hughes’ adoption of the ‘trickster’ archetype to inform Crow’s provocative musings on futility and meaning hover behind The Smile‘s choice of name, lifted from one of Crow‘s collated poems and the cause of much philosophical debate since its publishment. When explaining the meaning of the name at their surprise debut on last year’s Glastonbury Festival Worthy Farm livestream, the trio quipped “not the smile as in ‘ahh,’ more ‘the smile’ as in, the guy who lies to you every day…”.

Comprised of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood with one of Sons of Kemet’s two drummers Tom Skinner, The Smile started life during the 2019 lockdown, as many creative endeavours have, followed by a string of singles and the announcement of a world tour. Suffusing Skinner’s jazzy afrobeat skills across longtime Radiohead collaborator Nigel Godrich’s delicately ambient production sees debut album A Light for Attracting Attention wander through the eerie terrain of A Moon Shaped Pool but also reaching levels of angst and disarray not heard since In Rainbows‘ ‘Bodysnatchers’.

As is tradition with Radiohead and their various satellite projects, several of A Light for Attracting Attention‘s songs have appeared in setlists from years prior. ‘Open the Floodgates’, first premiered at a solo Yorke performance in 2009, channels the haunting beauty of ‘Codex’ with its serene piano patterns and tranquil electronics, Yorke’s exquisite vocals soaring the piece to aching depths of emotional effect. Final track ‘Skrting on the Surface’ resurfaces from Atoms For Peace iterations to a glorious demonstration of Greenwood’s intricate guitar picking as a haze of a jazz brass section mists around Skinner’s spontaneous, one-take drumming. Godrich’s trademark sonic mastery of dense textures and rich feeling from seemingly simple arrangements shine on the ghostly, ‘Waving a White Flag’, a hypnotic arpeggio twist away in jarring harmony with the London Contemporary Orchestra’s strings that are fuelled with that mystery, aural quality of elevated ascension beyond what’s humanly possible that characterise Radiohead’s output.

What sets A Light for Attracting Attention‘s apart from recent Thom Yorke solo records or even Radiohead’s material of late is the fire in its belly. The psych-motorik nightmare of ‘Thin Thing’ is frantically brilliant in its tangled, post-punk claustrophobia, Skinner’s frenetic percussion against spooky organs and electronically treated vocals are almost math-rock in its slithering time signatures. Deeper depths of menace are plumbed on the krautrock ‘We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Bring’, squealing synthesizers crawl over each other in a panicked squirm scoring Yorke’s lyrical pangs of desperate uncertainty recalling the toxic keyboards of Hail to the Thief‘s ‘Myxomatosis’. There’s a spike of D.I.Y. urgency to ‘You Will Never Work in Television Again’, a welcome sense of three guys in a room playing rock ‘n’ roll off the back of the studio heavy operations of Anima, a conjuring of Shellac style post-hardcore which point to exciting new directions for potential Radiohead explorations.

As ever, Yorke’s lyrics are oblique but tantalisingly evocative, making you ‘feel’ rather than know the themes of paranoia and impending implosion that pervade the record. “Don’t mess with me, as I die in the flames, as I set myself on fire” spits Yorke on the brittle groover ‘The Smoke’, speaking to the unmistakable taste of nihilism in the air as the world lurches on toward catastrophe. The thematic Crow’s search for meaning glides watchfully above ‘Skrting on the surface’, the terrible musing that perhaps life’s very meaning is our looming death surmised in its opening lines; “When we realise we’ve only to die, then we’re out of here. We’re just skirting the surface”. There’s a cautious optimism littered throughout serving as a hopeful bulwark against dead-end nihilism, ‘Free in the Knowledge’s conclusions that “that one day this will end” speak to the unassuming wisdom of “the best you can is good enough” from Kid A‘s ‘Optimistic’.

“There is a smile of love, and there is a smile of deceit” reads William Blake’s opening line to his 1908 piece The Smile, as well as serving as an introduction to The Smile’s series of Magazine gigs last January. The exhausting existence of navigating a bewildering world of decaying meaning and cynical self-advancement has been given a soundtrack to the “broken gutter pipe of a world” as Hughes described it. Veering effortlessly between rippling beauty and abrasive fever, Yorke and Greenwood with Skinner’s enlistment have demonstrated once again the consummate artists they are, A Light For Attracting Attention cementing themselves further in the ranks of The Beatles or Talking Heads in marrying creative exploration and uncanny accessibility that dances and stirs in perfect tandem.