A Light For Attracting Attention - The Smile: Review

The Smile

are a new supergroup made up of longtime Radiohead members Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood as well as Sons Of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner. A Light For Attracting Attention is the project's first record and features production from frequent Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. 

Review By Lav:

Have you guys heard of this band Radiohead? Well as it turns out they're one of the most universally acclaimed and beloved acts on the entire earth and just about anything that any of their members do is likely to draw attention. Not to mention perhaps the two most visible creative forces in Radiohead history, Thom and Johnny, collaborating on a side project together. Enter The Smile a new project which has been teased since last year and featured six singles of varying but mostly pretty good quality. Like most music fans I was pretty excited for this record on namesake alone, not to mention once I heard some great singles. As it turns out that excitement was well placed because A Light is a really strong start for this new project, assuming we ever hear anything from them again. 

In the abstract it felt like I was enjoying one single after another from this project, once I stopped and looked around I realized just how excellent a selection of tracks they really are. You Will Never Work In Television Again was the lead single and I really enjoyed it. Even after the shock of hearing the boys rocking this hard again fades the song is still exhilarating and the snarling vocals are intoxicating. The Smoke came next and it's an absolutely infectious comb of smooth drums and an irresistible bassline. I like the refrains quite a bit and excess instrumentation rushes in at just the right points to connect passages with great results. 

Skirting On The Surface came next and while I liked it as a single I like it even more as a closing track. The drumming is great as it methodically shakes its way through one catchy refrain after another but it works with a gentler hand that feels fitting for a finale. Next up was Free In The Knowledge which sounds like a fantastic Coldplay song, though I doubt most Radiohead fans would admit it. It has all the elements from beautiful instrumentation to gentle but impactful vocals and above all some incredibly memorable refrains. 

Even Thin Thing which came out just a few days before the record has become a favorite of mine. It starts off with another absolutely infectious instrumental combo that grabs me right away but when it really starts to kick off everything gets even more exciting. The only single I wasn't crazy about was Pana-Vision but if you're just totally eaten up by every single Thom Yorke falsetto then I suspect you'll like this a lot. The looped little piano phrase that saunters through the song is great but my major complaint about it is how few memorable refrains there are in the mix. 

So yeah that's a pretty strong start to the record and while I think the deep cuts do sort of let down the really strong start, there are still more tracks I really enjoy. Opening track The Same starts the whole record off with sharp electronics before shifting into something much more naturalistic in servitude of Thom's reverbed vocal refrains. His cries actually manage to achieve a level of anguish as they echo out into space while still maintaining a claustrophobia that I find magnetic. Open The Floodgates is another song that's grown on me a lot despite being one of the album's most reserved moments. Given how spaced out everything is I was surprised by just how much of the track stuck with me after just a few listens.

A Hairdryer starts off pretty slow but really hits its stride around the halfway point when it kicks into another gear. It goes on a pretty compelling journey even if not every single second of its five-minute runtime feels necessary. The Opposite features much more conventional rock instrumentation than some other songs on the record and while I like the sound of the song it does feel very disconnected in the way it unfolds. Speech Bubbles isn't sonically or compositionally offensive but it does remind me really obviously of so many different Radiohead songs. The instrumentation is pretty and occasionally the spacey vocal harmonies exceed pleasantries but it's never really that high impact. 

My least favorite tracks on the record both come in the final stretch starting with Waving A White Flag which is easily the most unnecessary song on the entire album. It doesn't really seem to go anywhere and it's not all that exciting in the first place so I'm not really sure what the point of including it was. We Don't Know What Tomorrow Brings is the only song here where I actually find Thom's vocals to be kind of annoying and it's not helped at all by the weak refrains. The instrumental is fine but far from a showstopper or one of the best on the album. 

A Light For Attracting Attention is a pretty good record but also a bit of a disappointment. After the strong start they got off to with the singles I'm not nearly as enamored with the deep cuts. Fortunately, all those good tracks are still included and the album doesn't really have many huge duds so the experience of listening through it is still a mostly positive one. With supergroups and side projects we can never really be sure how long-term the plans are but I wouldn't be upset in the slightest if The Smile returned for another round because they clearly have the potential to make even greater things. 7/10

Album Cover Review By by Tyler Judson:

This cover is a mixed bag for me. I really like the graphic and the colors used. They make your eye move through the piece smoothly and I like the disruption of the orange in the top left corner. Where it loses me is the text. It takes away from something cool and makes it look more like a self-help podcast cover. It cheapens the whole piece and while I think it needs text to succeed that text could have been implemented a lot better. It's okay but it could have been so much better. 6/10

For more indie check out my review of Arcade Fire's We here