It’s a 1990s revival week but with sneaky aliases. The leaders from two of the 1990s most beloved guitar bands are back. Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus has released an album with The Hard Quartet. Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke are back with Smile’s second album of 2024. They’re both misleadingly titled – The Hard Quartet aren’t especially heavy, and Cutouts isn’t an outtakes album.
The Hard Quartet
The Hard Quartet
2024, 7.5/10
The Hard Quartet is the debut from a bunch of 1990s veterans:
- Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus on most lead vocals
- Chavez/Superwolves’ Matt Sweeney on drums
- The Dirty Three’s Jim White on guitars and moustache
- Bonnie Prince Billy/Ty Segall associate Emmett Kelly on bass.
There’s lots of instrumental firepower for an indie band – ‘Earth Hater’ is built around a spiralling guitar riff that sounds more prog than indie.
It’s diverse – ‘Rio’s Song’ recreates the video from The Rolling Stones’ ‘Waiting on a Friend’, and its breezy feel is similar. Meanwhile, ‘Our Hometown Boy’, with Emmett Kelly singing lead vocals with a warmer voice, is close to power pop. The jerky ‘Hey’ could have come from Pavement’s Wowee Zowee.
The centrepiece is the lengthy ‘Six Deaf Rats’, meandering and chaotic. It references Big Star’s Third/Sister Lovers, with Malkmus singing “stroke it Noel”. The Hard Quartet tails off for the last few tracks and might have been better as a single album.
I haven’t kept up with Malkmus’ post-Pavement work. But I’d take The Hard Quartet over the last couple of Pavement records.
The Smile
Cutouts
2024, 7/10
*Cuts and pastes from the previous Smile album, released in January 2024* Radiohead haven’t made a new album since 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool. However, their two most distinctive members – vocalist Thom Yorke and guitarist Johnny Greenwood – are back for their third record with their trio The Smile. The third member is Tom Skinner, the drummer of the London jazz band Sons of Kemet.
The Smile’s second album of 2024 was recorded in the same sessions as Wall of Eyes. Yorke stated that the songs were split into two albums to do them justice and avoid burnout. He also said that it’s not an album of outtakes.
Cutouts is more relaxed than The Smile’s previous work, a change for the better. ‘The Slip’ feels comfortable in its low-key groove with a keening Yorke vocal. ‘Zero Sum’ is also groove-based, recalling Can’s krautrock. There are pretty, sophisticated arrangements on ‘Instant Psalm’ and ‘Tiptoe’, with the trio utilising the London Contemporary Orchestra.
But ‘Foreign Spies’ feels oddly placed as an opener. It gives the appearance that the record is more restrained than it actually is.
Unfavourable comparisons to Radiohead’s simultaneously recorded pair of albums from the early 21st century, Kid A and Amnesiac, are difficult to avoid. But Smile is a graceful middle-age for Yorke and Greenwood, even if the results aren’t quite as vibrant.
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I like the Hard Quartet. You mentioned Pavement…I have a song by them still in my drafts…one called Cut Your Hair that I haven’t posted yet. That stairwell in the video looks like the one that the Stones used in Waiting For A friend.
The Smile reminds me a little of Pink Floyd…that atmosphere.
Stephen Malkmus sang lead on most Pavement tracks, and also most of Hard Quartet. Cut Your Hair is him, it’s certainly one of their most accessible tunes.
Good spotting on Waiting for a Friend – I meant to put a caption saying that it was a scene-by-scene reenactment.
I like those atmospheric Smile tracks with the strings – wish they were a little more energetic/abrasive at times though.
It took me a while also to put it together that that stoop was also the same building that the album Physical Graffiti had on the cover.
I’m going to pull Cut Your Hair out soon and post it.
I get what you are saying…it becomes an almost atmospheric only song if not.