Wheres A Light for Attracting Attention was a shotgun blast of musical ideas, jumping from Anima-esque electronic soundscapes (“The Smoke,” “Open the Floodgates”) to groovy art rock (“The Opposite,” “Thin Thing”) to angsty rockers (“We Don’t Know What Tomorrow Brings”) to orchestra-backed tear-jerkers (“Free In the Knowledge”), Wall of Eyes hones in on a singular vision. The lads have put down their shotguns for snipers. And what’s in Wall of Eyes's crosshair? A swirling, vibrant world that distills the foundation of its predecessor down to the essentials before letting what’s left bloom and mutate into its own beast. Wall of Eyes is the sound of a more confident, collaborative The Smile, a version of the band willing to let their ideas ferment, even at the expense of immediacy.

Wall of Eyes is a work of psychedelic retreat. Millennial and Gen X music nerds sometimes looked to Yorke and Greenwood for guidance in navigating the jittery 21st century. But now the duo just wants to chase cool riffs and see where they lead. That wasn’t always the case. In 2000, Yorke said he didn’t want to be in a rock band anymore, and Greenwood bristled at the very concept in 2017: “Even when we were starting out, it felt like everyone’s been in a band. Bands were already old hat. That felt true then, and more so today.” Since then, Radiohead has gotten diligent about archive management, rescuing legendary B-sides and maintaining a website without releasing any new music. Working with Skinner has excited old impulses; the new album is best enjoyed as another rare opportunity to swipe a road-tested rock institution’s brain trust for gymnastic power-trio exercises. The new songs tend to run longer this time, owing to an interest in slowly building structures to warp by surprise or to systematically destroy.

Where Radiohead takes careful restraint as a guiding principle, the Smile just goes for it: there’s plenty of gorgeous nuance here, but also the sort of giddy reach-for-the-cheap-seats climax that their other group wouldn’t dream of indulging. Perhaps there will be a new Radiohead album next year, or the year after. Phil Selway, at least, seems to think there’s gas left in their tank. But judging by the tone of the Smile’s BBC 6 interview, they’re just getting started. If they keep making albums as good as Wall of Eyes, Yorke and Greenwood can take as long as they want before getting the old band back together.

- the surprise 2021 Glastonbury reveal
- the 2022 debut album, A Light for Attracting Attention
- last year's Wall of Eyes announcement and early demos