When Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood teamed up with Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner to form the Smile, it became immediately clear what their deal was. Without the level of quality control (or expectation) that’s attached to their main band, the Radiohead bandmates could let loose on a set of songs that are as jazzy, jammy, and wiry as they allow themselves to be, whether live or on record. Still, it’s funny that they’ve become quite so prolific – their new album, Cutouts, is their third in a little over two years and was born out of the same sessions as January’s Wall of Eyes. The point or sound of the Smile hasn’t changed drastically since A Light for Attracting Attention, though Sam Petts-Davies has been at the helm after the Nigel Godrich-produced debut. But some of the band’s energy seems to have settled, or at least shifted. While they continue to toy with different styles on the new record, the group struggles to break through the sense of fatigue that’s bound to build up around any band daring to release two albums within the same year. Their restless pace doesn’t always match the creativity that’s on display.

At least not in the way it’s displayed. It doesn’t help that Cutouts begins, inexplicably, with two of its more listless songs, ‘Foreign Spies’ and ‘Instant Psalm’: the first lurches eerily forward without the ambient sense of dread that pervades the best Smile (let alone Radiohead) songs in this mode, while the latter picks up the pace slightly. Greenwood’s string arrangement brightens the atmosphere on ‘Instant Psalm’, too, but the song does little to prevent itself from dissolving into the void in Yorke’s lyrics, which are typically somber: “Emptiness has many forms/ The only thing is to listen/ It has many forms/ And loneliness is a way to drown.” You can hear him vocally leaning into the feeling, but without the band breathing life into these many forms, it falls a little flat. Later in the tracklist, ‘Don’t Get Me Started’ is foreboding in a more intense manner, with abrasive synth stabs accenting its build-up, and though it takes a while to get there (at nearly six minutes, it’s the longest track on the album), the payoff is satisfying enough, if not quite on the level of Wall of Eyes’ ‘Bending Hectic’ or even ‘Under Our Pillows’.

That album was languorous and ominous too, but beyond the mood they created, the songs at the core (and the catharsis their studio recordings offered) were generally stronger. The slower songs on Cutouts, meanwhile, are more alluring for their potential malleability in a live setting. The band doesn’t have to end each song with a massive climax; one of the most effective moments on the album is in fact the most minimal, ‘Tiptoe’, which does an intriguing job of merging Yorke and Greenwood’s film score sensibilities. And it’s not that the record requires a greater amount of patience so much as the fact that it’s unevenly paced, less deliberate about its overall flow than it is attuned to the minutiae of a particular arrangement. There’s less to be gleaned from Yorke’s lyrics, too, which are more often abstract in a way that blurs out of view rather than cohering from bits and pieces into something truly haunting.

On the other hand, the more upbeat or traditional-sounding songs on Cutouts do nothing if not rev up the momentum, suggesting that none of the record’s shortcomings stem from a lack of inspiration. Following ‘Foreign Spies’ and ‘Instant Psalm’ is the funky ‘Zero Sum’, whose impressive guitar noodling, breakneck percussion, and vibrant brass parts render it one of the most intoxicating songs in the band’s catalogue. ‘Colours Fly’ harnesses Greenwood’s fascination with Middle Eastern scales as it descends into a cacophonous flurry. And when the band locks into a ferocious, warbling groove on ‘The Slip’, they extend it into a remarkable one-two punch with ‘No Words’. There’s no doubt the sessions behind the band’s 2024 albums were fruitful, but culling and sequencing two albums’ worth of material from them drags the second one behind. It ends on a striking note, though, with ‘Bodies Laughing’ evoking the tangible vulnerability the rest of the album keeps at a distance. It’s patient and playful and intricately moving, simple even, but leaves you with a nightmarish image you can’t just whisk away.