PopMatters' 10 Best Psychedelic Albums of 2024

Given that it evolved from an urge to do something—anything—creative during the pandemic, The Smile has turned out to be one of the most liberating and fruitful projects of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s latter-day career. *Cutouts* is the third record in little more than two years from the trio, which also includes Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, and follows just 10 months after their captivating second album *Wall of Eyes*. Its creation mirrors the cross-pollination that occurred between a pair of classic Radiohead albums. In much the same way that 2000’s *Kid A* and 2001’s *Amnesiac* were made during the same recording sessions but inhabited different sonic spaces and textures, *Cutouts* contains songs committed to tape at the same time as *Wall of Eyes* in Oxford and London’s Abbey Road Studios with producer Sam Petts-Davies. Whereas *Wall of Eyes* mesmerized with a tightly wound, autumnal restraint, there’s an unfurling expanse at work on *Cutouts*’ 10 tracks. With its cascading riffs, soulful piano chords, and yearning vocals, “Eyes & Mouth” is the epic center around which everything else revolves. The record never settles in one spot for too long: “Instant Psalm,” featuring beatific strings from the London Contemporary Orchestra, is a hazy folk gem, and “The Slip” is a synth-laden banger, while the frantic punk-funk grooves of “Zero Sum” sound like they’re trying to wriggle out of themselves. It remains to be seen whether anything can be read into the trio clearing the decks with this collection of songs, some of which were played live around the time of their 2022 debut *A Light for Attracting Attention* (or in some cases, even deeper into the past—the title of contemplative closer “Bodies Laughing” can be traced back to Radiohead rehearsals in the mid-2000s). But if *Cutouts* is the end of an era for The Smile, it caps off a prolific, potent period for Yorke, Greenwood, and Skinner.

++++ Please Note ++++ This is for digital purchase only, physical copies are available via Rocket Recordings website: rocketrecordings.com ________________________________________________________ The Ouroboros - the icon of the snake or dragon eating its own tail - appears to some a statement of the brutality of nature. To others of a Gnostic disposition it symbolises the duality of the divine and earthly in mankind. But most commonly, it’s taken simply to mean the endless cycles of death and rebirth that characterise life on this planet. As such, it’s an image that looms large in the world of Goat, the ever-mysterious and endlessly revivifying collective whose latest album marks another adventure above and beyond this particular plane of reality. This may be a band that has named albums both Requiem and Oh Death, yet this eponymous salvo proves yet again that transcendence and metamorphosis are their watchwords. Following on from the uncharted territory of the soul-searching and folk-tinged Medicine and the dark, atmospheric soundtrack to Shane Meadows’ The Gallows Pole, Goat sees this ever-unpredictable outfit summoning rhythmically-driven rituals in unmistakable, uplifting and scintillating style, equally adept at igniting dancefloors and expanding minds. Whilst this particular mercurial incarnation summons the party dimensions from which we were first introduced to this band well over a decade ago, it also possesses no shortage of curveballs and curiosity. ‘One More Death’ and ‘Goatbrain’ are spectacular curtain-raisers, embodying a hedonistic spirit driven by incisive funk and possessed by merciless fuzz/wah-drenched guitar. Yet if these and the filthy, swaggering groove of ‘Dollar Bill’ mark familiar territory for Goat devotees of old, ‘Fools Journey’ is just the first of several journeys into the beyond - a blissful drifting meditation infused with free jazz and shamanic overtones which bears the hallmarks of their concurrent project Djinn. True to the notion of this band effortlessly straddling past, present and future, ‘Frisco Beaver’ - another irresistible party-starter powered by insistent guitar filigree and percussion-driven trance-states - is a literal sequel to ‘Disco Fever’ from 2012’s World Music. Yet elsewhere Goat can happily look towards new horizons and come back with some of the most righteous vibrations they’ve yet delivered. The band’s love of hip hop is the fuel for both the rollicking ceremonial throwdown ‘Zombie’ and the end-credits-epic album closer ‘Ouroboros’ which marries infectious chant to breathless Lalo Schifrin-style breakbeat action. And which also means ultimately, like the titular oldest allegorical symbol in alchemy, we’re right back where we started. As Brad Dourif’s character Hazel Moates intones in the 1979 movie Wiseblood “Where you come from is gone; where you thought you were going weren’t never there. And where you are ain’t no good unless you can get away from it”; in Goat’s eternal now of renewal and revelation, there’s never been a more potent means of escape.