The Fat Angel Sings

Is there any festival more aptly named than End of the Road? As people and performers gather at the woodland site in Larmar Tree Gardens, near the border of Dorset and Wiltshire, it does inevitably feel like an ending – festival season, and summer itself, drifting into a gentle and bittersweet close. More than 100 live music performances featuring artists from across the world were on the bill at this year’s End Of The Road Festival, held in a quiet corner of rural Dorset.

The independently run event, which is in its 18th year, is renowned for its cross-genre musical line-up, and for showcasing emerging talent alongside established acts.

Headlining on Friday were Bristol-based punk band Idles, riding high after their Glastonbury set earlier in the summer, while on Saturday, 90s shoegaze pioneers Slowdive – who released their fifth album last year – were also taking a turn on the main Woods Stage.

It’s something felt by the artists as much as the attendees. Introducing a moving, pared-back set on the scenic Talking Heads stage, Jess Williamson (one-half of the Waxahatchee collaboration Plains) remarks that it has “last day of school vibes”. For others, such as the brilliant and sonically mercurial electro-pop duo Jockstrap, the weekend also marks the end of a long summer run: a tour in lambent twilight.

The biggest coup of the weekend actually comes on Thursday, as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, the indie-folk music project of actor-songwriter Will Oldham, holds court on End of the Road’s main Woods stage. His is a sound that has influenced a generation of songwriters: sparse, soulful and cerebral Americana. Oldham seldom plays festivals, and his booking here is said to be more than a decade in the making.

It’s worth the wait: watching him and his small band pluck and strum their way through songs such as “Like It Or Not” and the rousing anticapitalist ballad “In the Wilderness” feels like a rare privilege. Not many festivals would yield a primetime spot on their biggest stage to music this gentle and intimate; he is rewarded with an audience that’s pin-drop quiet. When people say that End of the Road is a music lover’s festival, one with audiences that are “more attentive” than typical festival punters, it’s easy to dismiss it as spiel or hyperbole. Oldham’s set suggests it’s right on the money.

On The Woods stage, though, it’s very much a gentle introduction to the weekend. Laetitia Sadier, following the Stereolab reunion that rolled through Larmer Tree Gardens a couple of years back, is here in support of her fifth solo album “Rooting For Love“, containing, in her own words “sonic balm[s] to aid the evolution of Earth’s traumatized civilizations”.

But it’s not all acoustic guitars and mellifluous choruses. The bill across the weekend spans a rich and eclectic range of sounds, from moshy young American outfit Lip Critic (playing in the darkened Big Top tent), to rowdy British rockers Idles, to Irish trad experimentalists Lankum, who headline Saturday’s garden stage slot with a set that’s by turns exhilarating and laden with doomy dissonance. The Irish folk group whose 2023 album became the first in the genre to be nominated for the Mercury Prize in more than a decade. Lebanese collective Sanam and Somali singer and cultural activist Sahra Halgan played the more intimate Garden Stage, 

Quirky singer-songwriter Joanna Sternberg is raw and captivating, performing twice, the second time in one of the festival’s many secret sets. Indie rock maven Julia Jacklin takes another, performing a terrific set of songs on her birthday – marked by a cake being brought out on stage.

Another of the highlights of the weekend is Irish country-pop powerhouse CMAT, whose athletic, funny and charismatic set includes an astonishingly well-executed cover of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights”. “This is one of the best shows we’ve ever done,” she says towards the end.

Away from the music, the festival is just as eccentric in its choices, with the cinema tent – moved this year into a brick-and-mortar hall, in the part of the site patrolled by peacocks – featuring a diverse and unpredictable mix, from Kelly Reichardt’s wonderful indie Old Joy to classics such as Back to the Future. The comedy billing, meanwhile, includes Stewart Lee, Josie Long, and Fern Brady, who delivers a sharp half-hour about her experience turning down a slot on Strictly Come Dancing, one of the “most sinister programmes on TV”, and a magic mushrooms-dazed trip to Thailand.

A drop-out from Fever Ray due to illness sees indie rock veterans Yo La Tengo seamlessly upgraded to the main-stage headline slot, The US indie rock trio were announced to close proceedings on Sunday.at one point bringing out a young child to join them on guitar, to the delight of the crowd. Despite this, and a few other cancellations, it’s a weekend replete with great music and great vibes. The end has never looked so full of possibilities.

The forthcoming compilation album “Echoes / Anam Cara” will be released on Lost Map on 12” vinyl and via digital platforms on October 18th, 2024. Bringing together songs from Blind Yeo’s two EPs to date, including their newly re-mixed and re-mastered 2023 debut EP “Echoes” (previously only available on limited-edition cassette), it’s the perfect introduction to a band whose wild and freewheeling sound continues to grow and grow.

“‘Anam cara’ means ‘soul friend’ in Gaelic,” says Blind Yeo singer, songwriter and guitarist Will Greenham. “The human face is the window to the soul. Your soul friend can know more about you than you know about yourself. These connections can last seconds or a lifetime. Sometimes you have to say goodbye to that moment that will never happen again. We captured the song live in a turbulent and emotive time and in true Blind Yeo spirit you will never hear the song this way again.”

Led by Will Greenham, Blind Yeo features a shifting cast of members which at present includes Henry Greenham, Sam Pert, Anoushka Helm, Jake Sheridan, Phil Self, Phyllida Bluemel and Dan Gilbert. The project began in the quiet and solitude of lockdown, before coming alive in a creatively explosive residency at the newly opened Cornish Bank in 2022 – a vibrant not-for-profit community arts space in the centre of Falmouth which has become the heart of a thriving underground Cornish scene of which Blind Yeo are very much a part. The band has since grown into a psychedelic carnival of sound best experienced live, as their memorable sets at festivals including Lost Map’s Christmas Humbug in Edinburgh and Great Estate and Tropical Pressure in Cornwall have proved.

Blind Yeo self-released their debut EP “Echoes” in April 2023, with tracks receiving plays from NTS, Soho Radio and BBC Introducing. It was followed in May 2024 by their Lost Map debut single ‘Otherside’ – a six-and-a-half-minute blur of motorik beats, rave synths and jagged electric guitar runs which received support from BBC 6 Music’s New Music Fix. Blind Yeo’s second EP “Anam Cara” was recorded last summer in bassist Jake Sheridan’s cob house, off-grid, solar powered studio hidden in woodland just off the north coast of Cornwall. Instead of putting it out as a purely standalone release, they’ve decided to pair it up with “Echoes” to create a revealing document of the band’s first two years together, and the thrilling journey of discovery they’ve been on to date – a journey that shows no time of stopping anytime soon.

“We started with live sessions last summer,” says Sheridan of “Anam Cara”, “two guitars, bass, drums and synth, to create and capture a raw and improvised energy. Then we finessed the tracks over the winter months, adding synths and strings. We produced everything collaboratively, often writing parts as we went.”

“Once an idea for a song’s been brought to the band there’s lots of jamming and improvisation and we all write our own parts,” adds synth player Henry Greenham. “It means the songs mean something personal to all of us – and these meanings and interpretations all joining and moving and flowing together creates our unique sound. It feels very powerful to connect with other humans through music like this.” 

releases October 18th, 2024

Laurie Anderson’s brilliant new record for Nonesuch Records is a fine example of an artist pulling influence into a cohesive whole, and tracks Amelia Earhart’s attempt to circumnavigate the globe in 1937, and her impact on the world of aviation. It’s a touchingly delivered tribute by one of the greatest working avant garde composers today, and is an absolutely fascinating listen in both scope and sheer compositional beauty.

“I spend a lot of time in the studio by myself doing stuff with a bunch of instrument panels, and I felt like I was making something that was gonna go somewhere somehow, so I had a feel for her,” Laurie tells author and journalist Jonathan Cott in a conversation about her new album, ‘Amelia,’ and her connection to Amelia Earhart. You can watch that conversation plus one with conductor Dennis Russell Davies, see archival photographs and film, and hear songs from the album, in this video on the making of ‘Amelia.’

 ‘Amelia’ is Laurie Anderson’s beautiful tribute, charting the story of Amelia Earhart’s ambition to be the first female pilot to circumnavigate Earth in 1937. It’s full of soaring melodies and tender plucks of delayed guitar, topped with Anderson’s evocative reading of letters and reports of the time. A stunning dedication, and a rousing, transportive listen.

Between his fifth and sixth album as Pictish Trail, Johnny Lynch decided to rework tracks from the former album into pared-back affairs, working well alongside two new instrumental compositions. The three “Island Family” tracks, now with harp and cello, are converted from bright psych-pop to primal but muscular, lightly psychedelic, quirky folk which fans of everyone from The Beta Band and Beck to James Yorkston, Martha Ffion, Mitski and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy may enjoy.

Isle-of-Eigg dwelling electro-acoustic psych-pop wonder Pictish Trail, AKA Johnny Lynch, released his fifth album “Island Family” in 2022 to critical acclaim from all from The Observer and The Times to Mojo, Uncut, Loud & Quiet and BBC 6 Music. As he works on a much-anticipated follow-up, Johnny has decided to revisit the family of songs that made up “Island Family” once again, and present “reduxes” of three of them in brand new, stripped-back form, recorded together with a specially assembled trio of musicians:

Semay Wu on cello, Gillian Fleetwood on harp, and long-time collaborator Susan Bear on keys/bass. The resulting EP, “Follow Footsteps”, will be released on limited-edition 12” vinyl in a gold-foil print sleeve, via Lost Map Records on September 13th, 2024, as well as on digital platforms via Fire Records. Pictish Trail will be playing some of these re-duxes live at tour dates throughout the summer and autumn, including at Green Man in August, in his 22nd consecutive appearance at the Welsh festival.

By putting the wild, untamed euphoric-bucolic psychedelia of ‘Island Family’, ‘Melody Something’ and ‘Nuclear Sunflower Swamp’ through a softer filter – complimented by a pair of short incidental instrumentals in ‘Follow Footsteps’ and ‘Flowers Rising Into The Black’ – Pictish Trail has discovered delicately kaleidoscopic new resonance in the songs.

About the making of the “Follow Footsteps” EP, Johnny writes: I’ve been working on writing songs for my sixth album as Pictish Trail for the past year, and wanted to try out something a bit different. “Island Family” came out just as lock-down restrictions were being lifted. It was an energetic, noisy, and distorted record, very much mirroring the frustration of being kept at home. Over the course of the next two years, I performed it loads with my full band, multiple headline tours, playing a ton of festivals, as well as supporting artists such as Pavement and Mogwai. The shows were sweaty and loud; making a racket felt cathartic.

“I’ve worked closely with my dear friend Susan Bear for the past 10 years – releasing music she made with her band Tuff Love, as well as solo stuff under her own name (including this year’s album, “Algorithmic Mood Music“). She’s also been a member of the Pictish Trail live band since 2014, as well as performing with other Lost Map acts. A staple of the Glasgow music scene, she also performs with The Pastels, Sacred Paws, Goodnight Louisa and does sound design and composition for theatre productions.

“Suse got in touch with me after one of my solo shows, saying she wanted to record the songs acoustically, capturing the intimacy of the performance. For years I’ve resisted doing anything like this, as a way of fighting off the dreaded ‘folk’ term – which seems to follow me wherever I go, whether I release an electronic-dance record or an industrial noise pop song.

“At the very start of 2024 I travelled down to La Chunky Studios in Glasgow, spending a few days recording guitar and vocal takes, along with Suse on electric piano and bass. We worked on three songs from “Island Family” – they sounded beautiful, but immediately we knew that they would benefit from some further accompaniment.

Pictish Trail’s critically acclaimed first pair of albums “Secret Soundz Vols. 1 & 2″ released in 2008 and 2013 respectively were gloriously eclectic slices of lo-fi folk-pop, later revived as a deluxe double-vinyl in 2014 by Moshi Moshi. His third album “Future Echoes” was released to further critical acclaim in September 2016, and went on to be shortlisted for the Scottish Album of the Year Award by popular vote, before being re-issued by Fire Records in the summer of 2018. His fourth album “Thumb World” was released on Fire Records in February 2020.

When not putting out his own music as Pictish Trail, Johnny is a fulcrum of Scotland and the UK’s independent music community. Through his label Lost Map Records, he champions a diverse and idiosyncratic array of talent.  

Basically Nancy is a four-piece band based in Savannah, GA comprised of Alayna Bowen on bass and vocals, Greta Schroeder on guitar and vocals, Shea Benezra on drums, and Lakin Crawford on guitar. The group started by playing local open mics and sloppily playing punk covers around town in venues they couldn’t legally drink in. Now years later, Basically Nancy performs all over the US and commands a room with original songs made up of heavy tones and aggressive lyrics combined with melodic sweetness.  Their music portrays the experience of being a young woman and the frustrations that come with it.

Their latest EP, a testament to their creative vision, was recorded with the late great Steve Albini. Albini’s influence on the band was profound, and his collaboration with Basically Nancy marks a significant moment in their career.

released August 30th, 2024

Recorded live-to-tape & mixed by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio

a concert programme for a date on the 1967 Jimi Hendrix tour, with (the) Pink Floyd, The Move and The Amen Corner sharing the bill. 

One of the greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Anthem’s of all time and most covered, garage-rock anthems of the 1960s. That was it, nothing more to it. Our boy is so taken by this glorious being whose name is “Gloria” that he’s going to shout her name all night; in fact, he’s gonna shout it every day. You could say he’s smitten.

Written by 18-year-old George Ivan Morrison, better known as Van, “Gloria” has received the Grammy Hall of Fame Award and is included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll—twice, although neither of the recorded versions cited is Morrison’s original. Perhaps that’s because “Gloria,” credited to Them, the Irish band Morrison fronted, was not a hit in the United States in its original form. It peaked at #93 on singles chart, slightly higher than its flip side, “Baby, Please Don’t Go.” In the U.K., “Gloria” was the B-side and “Baby, Please Don’t Go” what radio folks called at the time the “plug side.” The latter made the top 10; “Gloria” was noticed only by the few who bothered to turn the record over.

It should be noted that the “Gloria” from Van Morrison wasn’t even the first song by that name to make its presence known during the rock era. The tale told in that tune was pretty simple too. She’s Gloria. She’s not Marie. She’s not Sherie. Get her name right: Gloria. It seems this particular Gloria is “not in love with me.” That may change, the singers hope: “Well, maybe she’ll love me, but how am I to know?/And maybe she’ll want me, but how am I to know?” We never find out—as the song ends, Gloria still hasn’t come around.

In any case, the Gloria on the mind of Van Morrison in that summer of 1963, when he penned his song during an engagement in Germany with his group the Monarchs, bore little in common with doo-wop Gloria or disco Gloria. Morrison’s Gloria had one purpose in life: to please him.

It begins, inexplicably, with a description of her height:

“Like to tell you about my baby
You know she comes around
About five feet four
A-from her head to the ground”

She may be fairly short, the singer then explains, but she’s determined:

“You know she comes around here
Just about midnight
She make me feel so good, Lord
She make me feel all right”

The chorus follows, sung—one might say snarled—by the precocious red-headed Morrison, only five-foot-five himself and already so excited that a guitar solo is needed to give him a few seconds to catch his breath. But he’s just starting to get worked up. When he returns from the chorus, our young stud, a teasing organ riff helping him along, goes graphic. You can hear his lust:

“You know she comes around here
At just about midnight
She make me feel so good, Lord
I wanna say she make me feel all right
Comes a-walkin’ down my street
When she comes to my house
She knocks upon my door
And then she comes in my room
Yeah, an’ she make me feel alright”

Another chorus or two, the band builds its slinky, bluesy vamp to a frenzied crescendo, and Gloria and Van are presumably doing whatever.

The name’s six letters just happened to fit the particular rhythm he’d conjured up, sounded especially cool when shouted, and worked well with the three chords he assigned to his tune: E, D and A. (So easy, anyone can play it!) Morrison didn’t perform his new composition regularly until the year after he’d written it, upon his return to his home base of Northern Ireland from his stint in Germany. By that time, he’d decided to leave his then-current band, the Golden Eagles, and quickly hooked up with an already-working group called the Gamblers: Billy Harrison (guitar, vocals), Eric Wrixon (keyboards), Alan Henderson (bass) and Ronnie Milling (drums). Morrison both sang and played the saxophone.

A new, more memorable name was needed, they decided, and so they became Them, taken from a campy 1954 sci-fi film about colossal ants attacking L.A. “Gloria” made its debut when Them performed one of their regular gigs at Belfast’s Maritime Hotel. The song, Morrison once recalled, could last up to 20 minutes onstage, with long improvised sections that found him extending the story of his night time visitor every which way.

Decca Records took notice, and on July 1964, with Pat John McAuley replacing Wrixon on keyboards and session musicians filling in some of the parts, Them recorded “Gloria.”

Them steadily grew their audience not only in Ireland but in England, touring frequently, and soon set their sights on America, where, by mid-1965, the British Invasion was in full swing. Signed to Parrot Records in the U.S., Them sat back and waited for “Gloria”/“Baby, Please Don’t Go” to take off. And waited, and waited…

But Them simply did not make it in the U.S., even while they continued to score in the U.K. (the phenomenal “Here Comes the Night” hit the number #2 spring of ’65). By 1966, Morrison had decided it was time to strike out on his own. having released more than 40 albums and attained the status of rock god. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the famously curmudgeonly Van Morrison became the first living inductee to not attend his own ceremony.

“Gloria,” of course, did not die with Morrison’s split from Them. The song’s ascendance to garage-rock immortality seemingly every local rock ’n’ roll band worth its twang had discovered the tune despite its lack of airplay and sales, and had begun including it in their own sets. Among those was the Shadows of Knight, a band from the Chicago suburb of Mt. Prospect that took the British version of blues favoured by groups like the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds and the Animals—and Them—and gave it a tough, soulful, Chicago-style toughening up.

Fronted by 16-year-old Jim Sohns, the Shadows of Knight had formed in 1964 as the Shadows, but when it was pointed out to them that a very popular group existed in Britain by that name, they added the “of Knight” and carried on. Their live performances of “Gloria” went over well with audiences and when they were signed by the local Dunwich label, the group recorded its own take on “Gloria,” close in its approach and arrangement to the Irish original, changing a few words to make it radio-friendly in America (no more “She comes in my room”).

Released in December 1965, “Gloria” was a local hit at first, aired all over Chicago radio. Eventually, it was picked up by other stations around the country and on March 19, 1966, the Shadows of Knight’s “Gloria” entered the singles chart. “Gloria” went into temporary hibernation as the ’60s faded into the more cerebral 1970s. The garage sound in general became dormant as new offshoots of rock came into play. In 1972, rock journalist/record store clerk Lenny Kaye created, for Elektra Records, a two-LP collection of ’60s singles titled “Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era”, which included the Shadows of Knight’s cover of Bo Diddley’s “Oh Yeah,” their follow up single to “Gloria,” but only a few took notice of the album at first. (Later it would become massively influential and a must have in any collection.) Among the handful that did pay attention to “Nuggets”, however, were other budding musicians, who were growing tired of the excesses of ’70s rock and longing for a return to the simple, more aggressive sounds proffered by bands like the Shadows of Knight, the Standells, the Count Five and the Barbarians.

Among those who got what Kaye was offering was a young woman from New Jersey named Patti Smith, a poet who had begun setting her words to music onstage around New York City—with Lenny Kaye backing her on guitar. Signed by Clive Davis to his Arista Records in 1975, Patti Smith and her eponymous band cut their debut album.

The album, “Horses”, launched with Smith’s own interpretation of the now-10-year-old Van Morrison tune, “Gloria,” which she retitled “Gloria: In Excelsis Deo” and reworked so completely that the familiar “G-L-O-R-I-A” chant doesn’t surface until halfway into its six minutes. Starting with the provocative lyric “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine,” Smith’s slow-building “Gloria” is a tour de force of the emerging punk rock, nothing less than one of the most exhilarating and thought-provoking marriages of rock and poetry ever committed to tape.

“Horses” wasn’t a big hit, in early 1976. Although her concerts sold out and her reputation as an innovator was stellar, Smith wouldn’t enjoy a hit single until “Because the Night” in 1978, which she co-wrote with Bruce Springsteen. But she too, like Van Morrison, managed to survive any disappointing lack of early commercial success: Smith is still recording and live performing today (with Lenny Kaye still accompanying her) and her version of “Gloria” is considered a classic in its own right.

The song has, in fact, long lived a life of its own. Among those who’ve covered it over the decades are The Doors, who performed it between 1968 and ’70 and included it on their 1983 live album “Alive, She Cried”.

AC/DC covered the tune in their early days, U2 grafted it onto the ending of their song “Exit,” and David Bowie sang it on his 1990 Sound and Vision tour. The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s version can be found on a few different compilations and boxed sets, Tom Petty included it on his 2006 Highway Companion tour, and Bruce Springsteen has also been known to perform it at select live shows.

Iggy Pop’s 2011 album “Roadkill Rising” features his take, while Green Day, Bon Jovi, Robert Plant and the Grateful Dead have also bowed to its genius.

“Gloria” began life humbly, as a barely acknowledged vamp by an up-and-coming Irish blues-rocker. More than half a century later it’s recognized as a cornerstone of rock music. 

A veteran journalist for the U.K.’s best-selling music weekly has written his memoir about the era that he covered. Just Backdated – Melody Maker: Seven Years in the Seventies, comes from Chris Charlesworth who, between 1970 and 1977, was at Melody Maker in an era when rock stars fell over themselves to appear in its pages. It’ll be published on September 27th in the U.K.,

Initially the paper’s News Editor, Charlesworth was for four years the publication’s U.S. editor, based in New York, a unique position in music journalism, and in that time regularly rubbed shoulders with rock’s most iconic heroes.

From the publisher’s announcement: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Elton John and dozens more found themselves face to face with Charlesworth. He went on tour in America with The Who, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and many others. He was at 27 concerts by the original Who, often backstage or onstage. Somewhere above Colorado he took the controls of Led Zeppelin’s private plane. He saw an unknown Elton John at a disastrous festival in 1970 and predicted he would become a world star. He ambushed Pink Floyd in Glasgow and chased Bob Dylan in New England.

“I never felt closer to The Who than I did in New York in June [1974],” Charlesworth writes. “I tried to maintain my neutrality with them but I admired them so much, both as a group and as individuals that becoming close to them was somehow important to me and, of course, it helped me get the hot Who scoops for Melody Maker.

“They were bound together musically but not socially. [And] they were not as rich as the world imagined them to be. To survive, they needed to work, performing live as often as possible, perfecting the show and pocketing the fees they could command. This had the additional benefit of making them the greatest live band in the world.”

Charlesworth watched Bruce Springsteen in Norfolk, Virginia, and acclaimed his flair 18 months before “Born To Run” was released. He was the first music writer to write about the nascent CBGBs scene in New York, introducing MM readers to Debbie Harry long before she became a household name. He identified Slade as future stars a year before they had their first hit single. His only regret was never seeing Elvis.

Charlesworth says: “Looking back now, from the perspective of the 21st century, what I did and who I met between 1970 and 1977 seems unreal, a fantasy. Unlike the tightly controlled situation we have today, it was access all areas for rock writers in those years. Perhaps John Lennon’s tragic murder was to blame for that tight control. John tops the list of those I hung out with, along with The Who, Led Zep, Bowie and many more, but my memoir does not name-drop for name-dropping’s sake, just tells it how it was when I was lucky enough to be slap band in the middle of it all.”

Just Backdated – Melody Maker: Seven Years in the Seventies , which takes its title from a lyric from The Who’s 1966 single, “Substitute,” is Illustrated with selected photographs by celebrated rock photographers Bob Gruen and Barrie Wentzell. Charlesworth later become the managing director of Omnibus Books, Britain’s biggest music book publisher, a role he held for over 30 years.

Radiohead have not released an album in more than eight years, but principal members Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood continue their hot streak with their other band the Smile, The Smile has officially announced “Cutouts”, after dropping a series of clues on social media. The album, their third, is set for release on October. 4th. “We lovingly submit our latest 45-minute (?) record “Cutouts,” the Smile said in an new statement, “to be swallowed up by the fast running stream, down into the giant ever-growing river and on to the sea.“Cutouts” is available for pre-order now on compact disc, black or white vinyl, cassette and digital formats.

New videos for “Zero Sum” and “Foreign Spies” were also released. See both clips,

Internet sleuths have been working feverishly to sort and solve clues from the supergroup featuring Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead and Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner. One Instagram post, for instance, was said to spell out the words “three zero sum” when using a Polybius cipher. The best guess was that these clues hinted at song titles.

In the meantime, the Smile quietly released a new single in early August featuring a studio version of the 2024 concert staple “Don’t Get Me Started,” backed by “The Slip.” (Clues from a band tweet led another fan decoder to believe the song would be sixth on the track listing – and that turned out to be true.)

The single was produced and mixed by Sam Petts-Davies, who also helmed the Smile’s widely acclaimed “Wall of Eyes” from earlier this year. An accompanying video for “Don’t Get Me Started Again” was then released a week later.

“Cutouts” is also produced by Petts-Davies, with string accompaniment from the London Contemporary Orchestra. The album art was painted during the recording process by Stanley Donwood and Yorke.

“Wall of Eyes” followed the Smile’s debut, 2022’s “A Light for Attracting Attention“. The band also released a pair of live recordings after their first LP went to No. 5 in the U.K., “The Smile at Montreux Jazz Festival July 2022″ and “Europe: Live Recordings 2022″.