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The Smile: Wall of Eyes review | Alexis Petridis’s album of the week

Despite all the lyrical disquiet, there is a lovely sense of ease to the Smile’s second album – and some of the best music Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood have put their names to in at least a decade

There is one fabulously improbable moment in Bending Hectic, which depicts Yorke cruising through the Italian countryside in “a vintage soft-top from the 60s”, but don’t panic: it’s merely a precursor, a bit of scene-setting before the song is consumed by Ballardian thoughts of automotive suicide. But the interval has been filled with a torrent of solo projects, film scores, contemporary classical pieces, remixes, activism and two albums by the Smile, which unites Yorke and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood with Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner. It’s is frankly extraordinary on Read the Room: there’s a point, just over two minutes in, when Skinner suddenly disrupts the laid-back breakbeat with a succession of clattering fills so extravagant they seem to teeter on the verge of chaos, as if the track’s rhythm might be lost completely.

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