In case anyone was wondering whether I still had these meme:
Been using that for more than seven years now, and yet it is as appropriate now as it ever was. More so, when you think about it. And, yes, I could technically edit it to make it more appropriate for the band The Smile, but I don’t believe in such Stalinesque historical revisionism. If we don’t learn from our history, we are doomed to repeat it. And I really want to continue posting this meme, so I refuse to learn from it.
By the way, I am so ready to write a long post debating the nuances and the propaganda surrounding Josef Stalin! Isn’t it quite ironic how perhaps the 20th century’s biggest victim of historical revisionism has been Uncle Joe himself??
This won’t be that post though. It’s Saturday night, I’ve already written three posts today, and to be perfectly honest this just isn’t the album that deserves so much effort. In brutal terms: The Smile released two albums in 2024. This was the other one. I have plenty of takes on some Wider Issues around Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, don’t worry, but stay tuned for those.
It’s still a pretty great album, don’t get me wrong, it just isn’t on the same level as the other 2024 Smile album, which is the best work this particular branch of Radiohead has ever produced. ‘Cutouts’ starts incredibly: the gorgeous wooziness of Foreign Spies and the bleeding strings of Instant Psalm* are absolutely stunning additions to the absolute top tier canon of Yorke and Greenwood, and two tracks in you start to think that they may have even managed to better a career highpoint that they achieved just nine months previously. Then, Zero Sum goes all ‘latter half Radiohead’, with its insistence on being centred around a repetitive and looping refrain rather than an actual, you know, song. But that’s fine, it still works as an energetic pick up after the slightly more restrained first two tracks, and you wonder where the rest of the album takes you. Plus, that “Windows 95/Windows 95” chorus?? We can all relate to that.
(*which actually does sound like a 2020’s interpretation of Lucinda Williams *cough* Waxahatchee *cough cough cough coughcoughcoughcoughcough*)
Where the rest of the album takes us is to… nowhere important, really. It’s decent enough, don’t get me wrong – you don’t get scientifically and objectively recognised as the 37th best album of 2024 by serving up slop – but the album never again shakes the sense that these were simply songs not included on the other album because they weren’t good enough. Yeah, yeah, Smile, I can already hear you talking of how these songs “Didn’t fit the vibe of the other album, man” or how “We did songs for the other album, yeah, and I was like ‘Bro, check it, these bars be vibing enough for a whole ‘nother record, yo!'”, but these songs didn’t go on the other album because they weren’t good enough. You quite liked them, but B-sides don’t really exist these days, and if you just released them as a free download then you wouldn’t be able to feed your kids this Christmas, so here we are.
As decent as the lesser tracks from ‘Cutouts’ are, they can’t help but feel like mood pieces, jam sessions and simply dicking about. Yes, they went to private school, so their dicking about has to be studied and appreciated, and if you even called it dicking about you would be ostracised from polite upper class society. All I’m saying is their Posh Dicking About™ fails to truly engage on a lot of the record.
TLDR:
Lol, I’m just playing Yorke/Greenwood. You can make barbs back at me if you want. You have the right to defend yourselves, right?
(The Smile)
(Thom Yorke)
(Atoms for Peace)
68 in 2016
5 in 2007
(Radiohead)
Jesus, Thom, stay off my list, you fucking obsessive.
The Album Title As AI Image:
THE SIMPSONS DID IT!
Necessary Evil 
3 thoughts on “#37 The Smile: Cutouts”