In an era when most bands treat album cycles like slow‑moving glaciers, The Smile tear through 2024 at a pace most groups wouldn’t risk. Against the backdrop of Radiohead‘s increasingly sparse releases, where Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood have become almost mythic figures between long gaps, this sudden The Smile double‑album surge feels less like a side project and more like a quiet rebuttal to their day job’s sporadic rhythm. ‘Cutouts‘ is what happens when the same creative engine pours into a smaller, looser vessel, refusing to tidy things up before they’re out in the world, leaning into the surplus rather than trimming it down.
Even if you came to ‘Cutouts‘ first, the context keeps creeping in. Tracks like ‘Instant Psalm‘ and ‘Eyes & Mouth‘ echo the same twilit melancholy that defined ‘Wall of Eyes‘, but the arrangements feel more playfully layered, as if the trio kept scribbling in the margins. Greenwood‘s guitar lines slither between the cracks of Skinner‘s drums with a jazz‑club looseness that sounds, for once, almost relaxed. Yorke‘s voice leans into gentle falsetto and smoky half‑spoken phrases, less like a manifesto and more like someone muttering into a late‑night mic, as if the studio were a room they were in no rush to leave.
One of the clearer high points is ‘Bodies Laughing‘, which feels like The Smile at their most confidently weird. The track builds on a bass‑driven groove that slowly unravels into a full‑on, almost psychedelic crescendo, Greenwood layering in horn‑like textures and spectral electronics while Skinner‘s kit keeps the whole thing tethered to the ground. The way the song lurches from restraint to release, then back again, feels like the band testing how much tension a single groove can hold before it snaps. It’s the kind of track that could easily bleed into Radiohead’s own catalogue, but it wears its looseness like a badge of honour, less haunted, more drowsily inquisitive.
Elsewhere, ‘Colours Fly‘ unfurls in slow, wind‑tunnel sweeps of piano and guitar, conjuring a kind of sedated grandeur that recalls ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’‑era Radiohead, but with a lighter, more improvisational touch. Here, the band lean into mood rather than message, letting the chords and swells do the talking while the lyrics drift in impressionistic fragments. It’s the kind of track that should feel slight, but instead it becomes a quiet anchor, a moment of repose between the album’s sharper edges, proof that the band can sit in stillness without losing tension.
The title ‘Cutouts‘ is not just a nod to the album’s origins as leftover shapes from the same sessions as ‘Wall of Eyes‘; it also suits the way the songs feel assembled rather than drafted. ‘Zero Sum‘ and ‘The Slip‘ stand out as especially intricate constructions, each built from off‑kilter instrumental motifs that slowly accumulate layers until they sound lush and almost baroque. The way Greenwood‘s arrangements braid jazz‑like piano with taut, math‑rock‑adjacent guitar lines is a reminder that, even in this side‑project context, his sense of orchestration never fully loosens its grip. Skinner, meanwhile, keeps the whole thing moving with a drummer’s delight in odd‑metered stillness, never quite settling into a predictable pocket.
Yet for all its strengths, ‘Cutouts‘ does not disguise its structural quirks. Tracks like ‘No Words’ drift close to repetition, feeling like leftover ideas that never quite found their spine, and the sequencing sometimes feels more like a playlist than a narrative. It still distinctively The Smile, but the album’s appeal is less about arc and more about texture, the way you can drop the needle anywhere and still land in something enveloping. That makes it feel like a collection, which is perhaps the most honest way to present material literally cut from the same sessions as another record.
From a production standpoint, ‘Cutouts‘ keeps the same clean, detailed clarity that defines the best of The Smile’s work, but with a slightly more relaxed rim to the edges. Sam Petts‑Davies keeps everything tidy enough to hear the details but never sterile; a light veneer of warmth lets the electronics and acoustics coexist without one burying the other. Guitars and keys breathe freely, drums carry enough air to catch stick clicks and snare rattle. The voice floats within the mix rather than dominating it, which suits the overall mood of shared exploration more than a solo‑vocal showcase.
Lyrically, Yorke stays in his familiar lane of unease and fractured observation, but there’s less of a single through‑line and more of a series of recurring images: eyes, mouths, bodies, slips, reappearing like bad dreams. The words rarely feel as pointed as in some of his earlier work, which suits ‘Cutouts’. This is an album that thrives on atmosphere, not slogans. Even when the messages are vague, the emotional weight still lands, carried by the tone, the arrangement, and the restlessness that underpins nearly every track.
Placed next to ‘Wall of Eyes‘, ‘Cutouts‘ reads less like a rival and more like a best friend, the kind of companion that shows a different side of the same person. Where the first album felt more tightly wound, ‘Cutouts‘ leans into sprawl and surplus, celebrating the fact that the band has more ideas than they initially knew what to do with. It’s not as immediately striking as its predecessor, nor as thematically cohesive, but it’s alive in a way that feels honest and unforced.
For a project spun off from Radiohead‘s long silence, ‘Cutouts‘ is a reminder that when The Smile move faster than their own editing instincts, something genuinely interesting emerges. In the gaps between albums, the real story might be happening in the margins.
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