THE SMILE, "FOREIGN SPIES"

“In a beautiful world,” Thom Yorke begins his newest offering from Radiohead side project, The Smile, who are planning their second release this year in October. Unlike much of the other frenetic, note-heavy tracks (thanks to consummate performers Johnny Greenwood on guitar and Tom Skinner on drums), this track is, indeed, beautiful. It floats on breathy, circular and organ-like synths, with Yorke’s prettiest singing perhaps of his career.

“We are melting / And go running.” Pleasant enough. A song like this gives meaning to melting, as one note glides so gracefully into the next. “Nailed down / somewhere lurking,” it continues. “Falling over / zip tied”. The sonics don’t change, but the enemy (or the irony, as the case may be), is introduced, which happens often enough to be a defining characteristic of Yorke’s original music. “Foreign spies… / foreign spies…” One of Yorke and company’s most pleasing songs, it turns out, has a sinister underbelly. I shouldn’t have been so surprised, but I was.