For the pleasure of working together during the pandemic, Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood formed this new project, The Smile, then recruiting the young and brilliant drummer Tom Skinner (Sons of Kemet) whose tense, rich and nuanced playing is sometimes reminiscent of that of Jaki Liebezeit (CAN), sometimes that of Tony Allen. We are thus closer to the nervous and dry rock of the early days of Radiohead (in The Oppositeamong others) than hypnotic electronic atmospheres of Yorke, which leads us there all the same on the soothing Open the Floodgates and on Waving a White Flag. It is, essentially, a study of groove, afrobeat even on The Smoke, made up of guitars and percussion, then orchestration of strings and synths, always in the background; the songs unfold in length, the refrains merge with the verses, tied together by occasional complex rhythmic structures, if not for a few more furious passages, the more abrasive guitars of You Will Never Work in Television Again and the post-punk urgency of We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings.
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