More than two decades after Radiohead’s recording sessions produced two timeless albums, Kid A and Amnesiac, the side project Smile has achieved a comparable achievement with Cutouts, their second album of 2024. Arriving on October 4, just eight months after the release of their second album Wall of Eyes, Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and drummer Tom Skinner are prepared with a 10-track LP that includes songs from their previously canceled tour in support of Wall of Eyes (such as “Instant Psalm,” “Zero Sum,” and “Tiptoe”), recent singles “Don’t Get Me Started” and “The Slip,” as well as brand-new songs like “Foreign.”
Over the course of the previous week, The Smile teased the album with a number of social media messages that, when deciphered, revealed the Cutouts’ track list. With the release of the track list on Wednesday, there was still one trace of the scavenger hunt: the ninth song, “UGcgWGFkcWE=,” which bold Redditors had already decoded as the hitherto unheard track, “No Words.”
The Smile have also released the music video for their studio version of “Zero Sum,” which they debuted live in March 2024. The title of the album also derives from a line in the song, “A cutout trying to fill the void”:
