Cutouts by The Smile
Although it may again be a vehicle for them, in the eight years since the last Radiohead album, A Moon Shaped Pool, Thom Yorke has released two soundtracks and a third solo album and Jonny Greenwood has ticked off three soundtracks, numerous guest appearances and arranging jobs.
More telling regarding their careers beyond Radiohead is the third album from The Smile – the Yorke-Greenwood group with drummer Tom Skinner – following their acclaimed Wall of Eyes in January that charted high everywhere (except the US).
The speed at which The Smile albums arrive suggests it’s something more than an occasional side project. Wall of Eyes was a beautiful, innovative and coherent effort and this album – mostly recorded at the same sessions – follows a similar path of electronic grandeur (Foreign Spies), disruptive takes on pop (the string-enhanced Tiptoe, The Slip) and Talking Heads/Feelies jerkiness with feverish, Fripp-like guitar (Zero Sum, Eyes & Mouth).
Greenwood’s work beyond Radiohead with the Rajasthan Express and Israeli rock musician Dudu Tassa perhaps accounts for the exotic rhythms and sound of Colours Fly, and Don’t Get Me Started offsets stalking keyboard with exhilarating percussion and an echoed production, creating a sense of tangible depth as the piece changes shape.
There’s also busy soul-pop with a psychedelic keyboard part (No Words) and Yorke’s swooning vocal on the acoustic ballad Bodies Laughing.
Taken together, Wall of Eyes and Cutouts – adjacent to the adventurous spirit of Eno’s early solo albums – make an impressive body of work to be taken seriously but sounding like a band enjoying itself.
With that double-header, Radiohead aren’t much missed.
Thom Yorke solo tour: Wolfbrook Arena, Christchurch, October 23; Spark Arena, Auckland, October 25, 26.
Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn by Jim Nothing
Jim Nothing is Auckland’s James Sullivan, whose self-confessed touchstones are a trickle-down of the Clean and Snapper, most evident here on the cycleway rhythm of Raleigh Arena with “I get round on my bicycle and it feels so good and it feels so free”. Repeat, then repeat again.
There’s jangle-rock (the impressive if recognisable Hourglass, the title track), a living room singalong on the one-minute Can’t Find It Now (“dit-dit-dit-do”) and suggestions of Look Blue Go Purple on Sundown Clown with singer Frances Carter.
Falling somewhere between a rowdy home demo (The Shimmering) and the gritty guitar onslaught of The Jesus and Mary Chain (Lucky Charm), there’s also a brief good-natured nod to Plastic Bertrand’s faux-punk Ça plane pour moi on First Bite.
But there’s much to admire in the intelligent songcraft, and The Present, with its melodic jangle and gentle roll, recalls David Kilgour’s early solo albums: “Seed floating in a sea of grey, with any luck I’ll be here all day. An afternoon with a nod to the past, bittersweet with a nod to the present day.”
From the title inward, this is suburban alt.rock, as on Easter at the RSC: “Old timers try their luck at the TAB. Long weekend, hand signals to the ref.”
If the pop charms are familiar, they charm nonetheless.
The Hard Quartet by The Hard Quartet
If Jim Nothing mines local music history, the alt.rock sorta-supergroup Hard Quartet have plenty of their own to excavate.
What began as informal sessions for Stephen Malkmus (Pavement, the Jicks, Silver Jews), Emmett Kelly (Ty Segall’s band), Matt Sweeney (Cat Power, Will Oldham, Zwan) and Dirty Three drummer Jim White became a viable entity.
And they deliver a double album roaming from Byrds-like harmonies and classic twanging Big Star-pop (Our Hometown Boy) through slightly off-kilter, stoner country-rock (Rio’s Song, North of the Border) to the gristle and rubber-burning guitars of Chrome Mess and Earth Hater.
They take no prisoners on the bratty metal thrash of Renegade, put on heavy boots for the stomp-pop of Action for Military Boys, and Malkmus in Pavement-persona contributes the weird, shaggy-dog Six Deaf Rats, an unpredictable maze of constantly changing lyrical and musical directions.
But The Hard Quartet is quieter than their backgrounds suggest: the folksy Jacked Existence; country-folk (Heel Highway, Killed by Death); downbeat songwriter folk (North of the Border) and the dyspeptic blues of Thug Dynasty that sounds made up on the spot: “the last train to Clarksville already left from the station.”
Over 50-plus minutes, this isn’t without flat spots but if this is “dad rock” for the indie generation then middle-aged males are having it pretty good. Again.
