The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
The Smile · produced by Nigel Godrich · XL Recordings · about 53 minutes
Mode
Art rock remade as a guitar trio: interlocking guitar and bass, a jazz drummer, strings and horns in places; motorik, Afrobeat and uneven meters absorbed
Mythos
Deluge, smoke, a white flag of surrender, a surface skimmed, the same and the opposite as twins; one figure of the moment, a man of television
Phase
Thirteen tracks; an appeal on a pulse answered by the trio’s arrival, one fast strike placed early, loud and quiet alternating, a slow widening release at the close
Presentation
Album; thirteen tracks, about fifty-three minutes; the trio of Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner, produced by Nigel Godrich
Register
Dry and present; knotted guitar figures in shifting meters, loose drums, string writing under a cool mix, a voice often set back
Scale
One anxious sensibility under a crisis that is implied everywhere and named nowhere
Governing Proposition
Two members of Radiohead and a drummer from London jazz remake their song as a trio, guitar and bass at the front and the drums loose in feel and exact in placement, and set thirteen tracks on one condition: a public crisis felt everywhere and located nowhere, carried as rhythms that will not settle and a playing that never loses its grip on them. The record discloses through its playing more than its words, and its consolations are few and placed.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens on a pulse and an appeal, before the band has entered. The Same builds from that pulse into a swell, and then the trio arrives, on the second track, The Opposite. The two titles are a pair, set at the head of the record, and the doubling is the first idea of the record: a call and an answer, the same and its opposite, laid down before any song has had to stand alone. The arrival of the band is itself the event of the second track, guitar, bass and drums interlocking where the first track had only a pulse.
XL Recordings released the album on 13 May 2022. The Smile are Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, of Radiohead, and Tom Skinner, a drummer from London jazz; Nigel Godrich produced it. Yorke sings and plays bass, guitar and keyboards; Greenwood plays guitar, bass and keyboards; Skinner plays drums. Strings colour a minority of the tracks and horns a few. There are thirteen tracks, about fifty-three minutes. The trio had first played in public on the Glastonbury stream Live at Worthy Farm in May 2021, a year before the record.
The order is The Same, The Opposite, You Will Never Work in Television Again, Pana-vision, The Smoke, Speech Bubbles, Thin Thing, Open the Floodgates, Free in the Knowledge, A Hairdryer, Waving a White Flag, We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings and Skrting on the Surface. It alternates loud and quiet, tight and spacious. The single fast, loud strike comes third, early, as a jolt, and the slow widening release is kept for the last track. The sequencing is sound rather than argued, and it is placed with care at its ends.
Movement II
The third track is the record’s one fast, distorted strike, and it has the record’s one plain target, a man of television. The song is short and loud, near punk, and it lands between the opening pair and the slow string-lit Pana-vision as a jolt the record needs, early enough to show what the trio can do at speed before it turns to what it mostly does instead.
Its target is a type rather than a name. That keeps the song from fixing the record to a case, and it also limits what the song can uncover: a man of the moment, given a face, rather than a figure who carries the weight of a pattern. He is the one person the record names by his role. Elsewhere it gives few places, few persons and almost nothing named, and its images, a flood, smoke, a white flag, a surface skimmed, stay images, reaching toward old patterns of deluge and surrender without a figure to bear them.
The song and the gentlest track on the record lie at its two extremes. Free in the Knowledge is acoustic and tender, with strings behind it, and between it and the television song the record covers a wide range: near punk, chamber ballad, motorik groove. They share a voice and a production. Heard together they are anger and its consolation, two answers to one condition, and the condition is the record’s ground: a public crisis, climatic or civil or both, implied in every image and located nowhere.
Movement III
Thin Thing is built on a guitar figure that seems to turn back on itself, in a meter that will not settle. It is unrest made into playing. The guitar and bass interlock, the drums cross the meter without strain, and the song holds together by grip alone; nothing in it relaxes, and nothing in it comes apart. Here the record’s condition is heard rather than said, as a structure the listener has to follow, and following it is the experience the song offers.
The trio form is what makes this possible. Greenwood’s figures are exact and difficult, and his bass, where he plays it, locks with the drums. Skinner is the centre of the making: loose in feel and exact in placement, he carries the cross-rhythms so lightly that their difficulty is heard as motion. Godrich keeps the trio dry and present, each part legible. The same playing that makes the unrest makes the control, and the record’s whole argument is in that coincidence. A Hairdryer, later, is a second study in the same kind of knotted figure.
The inheritance behind the trio is wide: krautrock’s motorik pulse, Afrobeat, London jazz drumming and progressive rock’s uneven meters, all long proven, and above all the parent band, which had moved toward electronics and studio layering. Here the electronics give way to guitar and bass at the front and a jazz drummer’s looseness. The band came to it with an audience already waiting, with its parent band’s producer, and with a singer and a guitarist whose manner was already their own. On a first hearing the meters are not plain; on return the counts begin to be followed.
Movement IV
Free in the Knowledge is the warmest point on the record, plain and acoustic, with strings behind it, and its subject is consolation. It is lifted by its tenderness rather than by force, and it is the place where the record lets its grip loosen. Pana-vision and Speech Bubbles, earlier, had reached a different beauty, cinematic and string-borne, the string writing entering under the songs with a composer’s hand and never sweetening them. Between those three tracks and the opening swell, the record rises often.
It rises, though, at a little distance. The mix is cool and dry, and it keeps even the heights apart from the listener. The voice is often set back and blurred, so that a record with words withholds them, and the words themselves are oblique: floods, smoke, a white flag, a surface skimmed. What the record uncovers it uncovers mostly through its sound, and what the sound uncovers is a pervasive dread held under discipline, closer to a condition felt than to one stated.
Some tracks do less than their neighbours. Open the Floodgates and Waving a White Flag are textures more than turns, sketches dressed as songs; Pana-vision and Speech Bubbles share one slow, string-lit manner. Free in the Knowledge would mean the same on another record, and the string tracks would carry their meaning in another order. Across fifty-three minutes the precision is diluted. The record is a band’s first book of songs, and it carries some of what a first book gathers.
Movement V
The last track closes in a slow, widening rise. Skrting on the Surface is the release the record has held back since its opening pair, and its title names the record’s last image, a surface skimmed rather than entered. It does not resolve the unrest of the tracks before it. It opens out from it, wider rather than higher, and lets the record end with its grip relaxed.
The world the record holds is narrow and pervasive at once. A mind is held, as anxiety; power and the media appear in one song; a public crisis is everywhere and nowhere; consolation comes in one track. Love, the family, labour, history and the sacred are absent or glimpsed, and the oblique words hold even what is present at arm’s length, so that it appears as weather more than as structure. One sensibility joins it.
The record is four and a half years old. It survives whole, in one edition, and its presence in streaming and in the trio’s concerts is continuous; but its following is largely its parent band’s, and two further records by the trio, both of 2024, now compete for it. It showed that the drumming of London jazz could carry art rock, and it was widely heard and praised; no practice elsewhere is yet traced to it. Its fabric, live players with strings and horns, carries little of its season, and that is in its favour.
Act III · The Twelve
Thirteen tracks in about fifty-three minutes, and the important parts are required. The opening is necessary: The Same sets a pulse and an appeal before the band enters, and the trio’s arrival on The Opposite answers it, the two titles named as a pair. You Will Never Work in Television Again is the one fast, loud strike and earns its place early. Skrting on the Surface is the close the record needs, a release kept back until the end. The test finds give in the middle. Pana-vision and Speech Bubbles share a slow, string-lit manner, and Thin Thing and A Hairdryer are both studies in a knotted guitar figure, so that one of each pair does less than the other; Open the Floodgates and Waving a White Flag are textures more than turns.
Score: 8.4 / 10
What the record uncovers is a condition of living under a crisis that is felt everywhere and located nowhere: unrest that does not resolve, held by a discipline that does not break. Sound discloses it as fully as words, and is credited so. The rhythms will not settle, the guitar figures turn back on themselves, and the playing holds them anyway; the anxiety is heard as structure rather than reported. The one plain target, a man of television in the record’s one fast song, is a type of the moment, which gives the condition a face. Held from the top because the words are oblique and set back, and what is disclosed is closer to a pervasive dread than to a condition stated in terms that could be tested.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Elevation comes often, and in more than one kind. The Same builds from its pulse into a swell that is a real height for an opening. Pana-vision and Speech Bubbles reach a cinematic, string-borne beauty, the strings entering under the songs without sweetening them. Free in the Knowledge, plain and acoustic with strings behind it, is the warmest point, lifted by its tenderness. Skrting on the Surface closes in a slow, widening rise. Between them Thin Thing and A Hairdryer are taut and absorbing, and the television song is a jolt. Five or six of thirteen tracks rise. What holds it from the top is distance: the cool, dry mix keeps even the heights a little apart from the listener, and the rest has force and intricacy more than height.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Myth is evoked in images that reach toward old patterns and built at one point. The images are deluge, smoke, a white flag of surrender, a world skimmed rather than entered; they summon the flood and the defeat without naming either. The built point is the opening pair: The Same and The Opposite, twins set at the head of the sequence, the appeal and its answer, a doubling the record makes structural by placing it first. The man of television is the one figure, a type of the moment. Held back because no figure bears the images and no passage across the sequence makes them load-bearing; the particular is withheld too, with few places, few persons and almost nothing named.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The inheritance is the parent band of two of its members, and around it krautrock’s motorik pulse, Afrobeat, London jazz drumming and progressive rock’s uneven meters. The turn is real in kind, not only of degree. Where Radiohead had moved toward electronics and studio layering, this is a trio with guitar and bass at the front, knotted figures in shifting meters, and a jazz drummer whose looseness changes how the songs move; the electronics are set aside for the playing. Held back by the stake. It was a first record by a band with an audience secured in advance, made with the parent band’s producer, by a singer and guitarist who brought their manner whole, in jazz and motorik languages long proven.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Change the form and much of what the record knows goes with it. The trio form is the instrument: the interlock of guitar, bass and loose drums makes unrest felt as rhythm, and Thin Thing’s figure, which seems to turn back on itself, is anxiety heard rather than said. Played by a studio ensemble or programmed, the songs would lose the grip that holds them, and the grip is the meaning. The pairing of The Same and The Opposite at the head of the record is a formal idea. The sequence is counted here, once: it alternates loud and quiet, tight and spacious, with the television song placed early as a jolt and Skrting kept for release. Held back because Free in the Knowledge and the string tracks are containers more than instruments.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Four and a half years supply little evidence, and the axis is forecast; the forecast is strong on the formal side. The guitar and bass figures interlock in meters that are not plain on a first hearing, and on return a listener begins to follow the counts and the cross-rhythms; the string writing hides detail under the mix that surfaces only on repeated hearing. The words, oblique and partly buried, invite return as well. Held back by what the evidence cannot yet show. Much of what is found in oblique words is what the listener brings, the images do not obviously open further, and the trio’s two later records (2024) show a living practice without showing this record yielding.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The field is the guitar-band and art-rock album of the early 2020s. Intrinsic force: two members of a major band remade their song in a trio with a jazz drummer, guitar-forward and rhythm-led, and showed that the drumming of the London jazz scene could carry art rock. That enlarges a manner and opens a door between two scenes. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the record was widely heard and praised, the band continued, and two further records followed in 2024. Held back on reach. The attention that comes from the parent band’s fame is presence on loan, not pressure on the field, and is not credited; no practice elsewhere is traced to this record, and delayed reach cannot yet be credited.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Survival is weighed over four and a half years, which is all the record can show, and the axis is the lowest of the twelve. The form is whole: one edition, one track list. Presence is continuous for its age, in streaming and in the trio’s concerts, but it rests largely on its makers’ standing: the following is the parent band’s, and two later records by the trio now compete for it. Popularity is credited as presence, not proof, and borrowed presence is charged. The fabric is less fixed to a moment than many records of its year: live drums, guitar and bass, strings and horns, no production signature of its season, and the television song’s target is a type rather than a name. What holds it is the span and the borrowing.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere, and the making is load-bearing throughout. Greenwood’s guitar figures are exact and difficult, and his bass, where he plays it, locks with the drums. Skinner’s playing is the centre of the making, loose in feel and exact in placement, crossing meters without strain, so that the record’s unrest and its control are carried by one pair of hands. The string writing has a composer’s hand, entering under Pana-vision and Speech Bubbles without sweetening them. Godrich keeps the trio dry and present. Held from the top by faults that are real and spread: the voice is often set back and blurred, some tracks are sketches dressed as songs, and fifty-three minutes dilute the precision.
Score: 8.9 / 10
One law governs the record: unrest under control, rhythms that will not settle held by playing that never loses its grip, with consolation allowed in a few places. The two most distant elements are You Will Never Work in Television Again, a fast, distorted strike, and Free in the Knowledge, acoustic and gentle with strings. They share a voice and a production and are heard as anger and its consolation, two answers to one condition. The range is wide, from near-punk to chamber ballad to motorik groove, and it is held: the players and the sound keep every track under the same grip. Held from the top because the record does not itself make the connection between its farthest songs; the law is kept by the playing more than stated by a governing idea.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness is held, as anxiety. Power and the media are present in one song, sharply. A public crisis, climatic or civil or both, is implied everywhere, in floods and flags and in The Same’s appeal, and gives the record its ground. Consolation is held in Free in the Knowledge. One sensibility joins what is present. What holds the axis is what is absent and how the rest appears: love, the family, labour, history, the sacred and the natural order beyond the image are absent or glimpsed, and the oblique words hold the orders at arm’s length, so that they appear as weather more than as structure.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.3 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 8.9, then The Sublime at 8.7, The Bottomless Well and The Inner Law at 8.5. A making whose unrest and control are carried by the same playing, exact guitar figures over a drummer loose in feel and exact in placement, string writing with a composer’s hand and a dry, present production; elevation on five or six of thirteen tracks, from the opening swell to the widening close; and one law, unrest under control, held from near-punk to chamber ballad.
Limiting Dimension
The Imperishable at 7.4: four and a half years of survival, on a presence borrowed largely from the parent band and now shared with two later records by the trio. Next above it, The Encompassed at 7.6, a few orders, mostly glimpsed, held at arm’s length by oblique words; then The Archetypal Deep at 8.0 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.1, images of deluge and surrender borne by no figure, and a door opened between two scenes with no redirection yet traced.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.4 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.3, The Made at 8.9, The Inner Law at 8.5, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Unconcealment at 8.3, The Swerve at 8.3, The Archetypal Deep at 8.0, Pressure on Tradition at 8.1 and The Imperishable at 7.4 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Imperishable, 7.4, below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.6. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 8.3, in the band of Tier IV, short of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as released by XL Recordings on 13 May 2022: thirteen tracks in their order, about fifty-three minutes, by Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner, produced by Nigel Godrich. Judged from knowledge of the recording and its reception; no recording or lyric sheet was in hand. No edition differs in content. The singles issued before the album, the trio’s first public performance on Live at Worthy Farm (May 2021) and its two later records (2024) are evidence for presence and practice, not the object, and the parent band’s standing is credited to nothing. Songs are cited by title and no lyric is quoted; the words are known in outline and paraphrased only where their sense is plain. Facts that could not be verified, among them the track timings, the players of the strings and horns and the tracks they play on, the studio, the history of individual songs before the record, the particular subjects of some songs, the meters counted in figures and the drummer’s other work, are not given.