The Smile: Cutouts Vinyl LP

Why you'll love it

This XL LP comes in a matte gatefold jacket with spot varnish and a printed inner sleeve. Cutouts reached No. 7 on the UK Albums Chart and drew wide critical acclaim.

This edition

Matte gatefold jacket
Printed inner sleeve
Lyrics included

About the album

Thom Yorke found the title while reading about espionage: a cutout is a two-dimensional go-between who lets spies connect without meeting. He tied that to the flat, avatar life of social media, and the Smile built an album around the uneasy feeling.

Cutouts came from the same sessions as Wall Of Eyes, recorded with producer Sam Petts-Davies in Jonny Greenwood's Oxfordshire studio and at Abbey Road, then finished on tour. Yorke said they split the songs in two to do them justice, and Greenwood insisted these were no leftovers. "Zero Sum" was inspired by footage of Microsoft executives dancing at the Windows 95 launch, "Bodies Laughing" is a song Yorke had been trying to finish for more than 20 years, now a paranoid easy-listening tune, and the riff of "Eyes And Mouth" first surfaced on Radiohead's 2016 tour. "Don't Get Me Started," "The Slip" and "Foreign Spies" came out as singles with videos by digital artist Weirdcore.

Critics heard experimental rock, art rock and math rock, with Tom Skinner's drumming steering it all. Two albums from one set of sessions inside nine months; most of us can't finish a jigsaw that quickly.

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