The Smile Cutouts

Critic's Take

The Smile's Cutouts finds its best tracks in vivid, tension-filled miniatures, led by “Zero Sum” and “Eyes & Mouth” which feel like the album's emotional centers. The reviewer singles out “Zero Sum” for its clipped Yorke vocal, Skinner’s funky cowbell and Greenwood’s breakneck delay-pedal riff, and calls “Eyes & Mouth” the groovy, euphoric centerpiece. Equally notable are “The Slip” and “No Words”, the former rowdy and jazz-funk forward, the latter a desolate, highway-at-2 a.m. synth-guitar rush that grips the listener. The tone is affectionate but exacting, praising reinvention while noting where live versions once carried a different catharsis.

Key Points

• The best song, "Eyes & Mouth", is the album's groovy, euphoric centerpiece elevated by choral voices and nimble bass.
• Cutouts' core strengths are its tension-rich textures, live-to-studio reinventions, and vivid synth-guitar arrangements.

Themes

Critic's Take

Scotty Dransfield hears the best songs on Cutouts as those that turn motifs into fully realized landscapes - namely “Instant Psalm”, “Eyes & Mouth” and “Tiptoe”. He writes with a measured, comparative voice, noting how these tracks achieve a lushness reminiscent of Radiohead while helping The Smile finally cohere as an album. The reviewer emphasizes the album’s consistent mood and the pleasing transitions between dark electronics and string‑laced acoustic moments. This is framed as an artistic advance: the best tracks make Cutouts feel like a unified statement rather than a loose collection.

Key Points

• The best song succeeds by marrying lush arrangements and melodic complexity to create emotional cohesion.
• The album’s core strengths are its consistent mood and the seamless blend of electronic production with organic instrumentation.

Themes

Critic's Take

The Smile’s Cutouts reads like a tidy cupboard-clearing triumph, where the best songs - “Colours Fly”, “Foreign Spies” and “Instant Psalm” - outshine the collection’s archival intent. The reviewer’s voice finds the record surprisingly approachable compared with Wall of Eyes, praising the murkily soaring grandeur of “Colours Fly” and the unsettling beauty of “Foreign Spies”. There is genuine admiration for songs that feel accidentally omitted before, such as “Instant Psalm”, which the piece singles out for its dramatic string arrangement. Overall the tone is celebratory but enquiring, suggesting Cutouts succeeds beyond expectations while still feeling like a set of offcuts rather than a full reinvention.

Key Points

• The best song is "Colours Fly" because of its murkily soaring, National Anthem-like pulverising groove and 21st century anxious foreboding.
• Cutouts succeeds as an approachable, compositionally adventurous collection that balances rhythmic complexity with moments of unsettling beauty.

Themes

Critic's Take

In a voice that celebrates spontaneity and elastic grooves, The Smile deliver on Cutouts with songs like “Eyes & Mouth” and “Tiptoe” standing out as true showpieces. Zach Schonfeld frames the record as looser and funkier than its predecessor, praising Tom Skinner’s syncopation on “Eyes & Mouth” and Yorke’s piano work on the lush, trembling “Tiptoe”. He highlights Greenwood’s adventurous riffing on “Zero Sum” and the Middle Eastern-tinged ascent of “Colours Fly”, which together make the best tracks on Cutouts feel both restless and revelatory. The review reads like a thrilled catalog of live-tested winners, recommending these songs for listeners seeking the best tracks on Cutouts.

Key Points

• The best song, "Eyes & Mouth", is best for its exhilarating, restlessly percolating groove anchored by Tom Skinner.
• The album’s core strengths are live-tested spontaneity, adventurous Greenwood guitar work, and a looser, funkier rhythmic focus.

Themes

Critic's Take

In a voice that privileges comparative judgement and subtle enthusiasm, The Smile’s Cutouts emerges as a quietly superior record to earlier work, its best moments such as “Zero Sum” and “Tiptoe” offering the clearest payoff. The reviewer frames the album through its debt to Radiohead and prior Smile records, noting how particular tracks sharpen ideas rather than reinvent them. For listeners asking "best songs on Cutouts," the piece points repeatedly to “Zero Sum” as a standout and “Tiptoe” as a highlight, praising their focus and clarity. The tone remains measured, comparing rather than exulting, which makes the recommendation feel deliberative and audience-aware.

Key Points

• The reviewer singles out "Zero Sum" as the album's best song for its clear payoff and sharpening of ideas.
• The album's core strength is measured evolution from previous records, rewarding listeners familiar with Radiohead and The Smile.

Themes

Critic's Take

The Smile sound reborn on Cutouts, with opening tracks like “Foreign Spies” and “Instant Psalm” staking out the best songs on Cutouts through radiant synths and stirring strings. The reviewer’s delight is palpable as the band shifts from haywire jazz-rock into ambrosial new dawns, yet never abandons its tetchy, convulsive lineage - that tension makes “Zero Sum” and “Tiptoe” stand out as career-high curiosities. If you search for the best tracks on Cutouts, look no further than these moments where Greenwood’s orchestration and Yorke’s plaintive delivery align to thrilling effect.

Key Points

• The best song moments come from the fusion of Yorke’s plaintive vocals and Greenwood’s orchestration, exemplified by “Foreign Spies” and “Tiptoe”.
• Cutouts’ core strengths are its renewed creativity, adventurous arrangements, and confident blending of jazz-rock, kosmische and post-punk-funk textures.

Themes

Critic's Take

The Smile return with Cutouts, an album where the best tracks reveal themselves through repeat listens rather than instant hooks. Phil Mongredien applauds the propulsive “No Words” for its irresistibly sinuous bassline and motorik beat, and highlights “Don’t Get Me Started” for Skinner’s skittering polyrhythms and ominous keyboard motif. He also finds the closer “Bodies Laughing” quietly moving in its straightforwardness; these three songs, he implies, are the best tracks on Cutouts, balancing Yorke’s foreboding lyrics with a surprising lightness of touch.

Key Points

• The propulsive bassline and motorik beat make “No Words” the album’s standout.
• The album’s core strength is marrying Yorke’s foreboding lyrics to unexpectedly light, swinging soundscapes.

Themes

Critic's Take

In this review Roisin O'Connor finds the best songs on Cutouts to be the nimble opener and the joyous centrepieces - “Foreign Spies” and “Eyes & Mouth”. She writes in an admiring, descriptive tone that highlights the album's off-kilter energy and orchestral flourishes, noting how “Instant Psalm” and “Tiptoe” expand the record's textures. The reviewer praises the playful, inventive performances, making clear why listeners searching for the best tracks on Cutouts should start with “Foreign Spies” and “Eyes & Mouth”.

Key Points

• “Foreign Spies” is the standout opener because it sets a slow-unfurling, synth-laced mood that defines the record.
• The album’s core strengths are its off-kilter energy, orchestral textures and playful experimentation from Yorke and Greenwood.

Themes

Critic's Take

The Smile come across on Cutouts as quietly consistent rather than revelatory, the best songs being the closing pair. The reviewer's eye lingers on “No Words”, which moves from a church bell-like loop to propulsive drums, and on “Bodies Laughing”, whose acoustic guitar and float-along Thom Yorke vocal make it a standout. Elsewhere tracks like “Eyes & Mouth” and “Tiptoe” underline the album's atmospheric leanings while “Don’t Get Me Started” earns notice for its dubby breakdown. For listeners asking 'best tracks on Cutouts' the safe answers here are “No Words” and “Bodies Laughing”, described in the review as the clearest hooks on the record.

Key Points

• The best song(s) are the closing tracks, particularly 'Bodies Laughing', for their hooks and intimate acoustic vocals.
• The album's core strengths are its consistent atmospheric textures, dubby breakdowns, and restrained melodic hooks.

Themes

Critic's Take

In his characteristically wry, celebratory voice Andy Hill insists that The Smile have made a joyous record with Cutouts, pointing to “Foreign Spies”, “Instant Psalm” and “Zero Sum” as the album's happiest moments. He writes with punchy, conversational relish, calling the opener a "radiant overture" and praising the band for being "having a ball" while pulling melodies out of what he jokingly calls witchcraft. Hill highlights the slow, gorgeous “Tiptoe” and the inventive, ear-bending “Don't Get Me Started” as evidence of the record's cinematic polish and rhythmic inventiveness. The review reads like a delighted eyewitness account - upbeat, funny and unashamedly affectionate about the best tracks on Cutouts and why they stand out.

Key Points

• The best song works because it combines radiant melody with exuberant performance, exemplified by the opener and the explosive 'Zero Sum'.
• The album's core strengths are its upbeat, danceable tone, cinematic arrangements and joyful reinvention of Yorke's melodic gifts.

Themes

Critic's Take

The Smile’s Cutouts is at once playful and probing, with the best songs revealing the band’s knack for experiment-led hooks. Tracks like “Zero Sum” and “Instant Psalm” stand out - the jittery, proggy push of “Zero Sum” and the woozy, Beatles-tinged sway of “Instant Psalm” make them the album’s clearest highlights. Yorke’s tongue-in-cheek delivery and the trio’s loosened jazz sensibility keep the record buoyant rather than beholden to Radiohead’s weighty legacy. This is a record of small revelations rather than grand statements, and for listeners asking which are the best songs on Cutouts, those two are where the record’s pleasures most insistently live.

Key Points

• The best song(s) like “Zero Sum” combine jittery guitar and taut percussion to deliver the album’s most immediate thrills.
• The album’s core strengths are playful experimentation, jazz-tinged textures, and a comfortable extension of Radiohead-adjacent aesthetics.

Themes

Critic's Take

In her exuberant, observant voice Aimee Ferrier crowns The Smile’s Cutouts as an immersive triumph that is at its best played loud, and she singles out “Instant Psalm” and “Zero Sum” as the clearest standouts. Ferrier writes with a fan’s precision, calling “Instant Psalm” "one of the best songs The Smile have ever made," its strings and flutes making it glow above the rest, while “Zero Sum” is celebrated for jolting guitars and irresistible momentum. The narrative keeps faith with Radiohead lineage but insists this is unmistakably The Smile, a band whose textures, rhythms and cinematic moments make the best tracks on Cutouts essential listening.

Key Points

• The best song is “Instant Psalm” because of its emotional richness and gorgeous strings and flutes.
• The album's core strengths are textured instrumentation, cinematic orchestration, and a confident blend of Radiohead lineage with The Smile's distinct rhythms.

Themes

Critic's Take

There is a prevailing melancholic intelligence across The Smile’s Cutouts, where the best songs - notably “Foreign Spies” and “Bodies Laughing” - assert mood over melody. The opener “Foreign Spies” sets a dirge-like atmosphere that anchors the record, while “Bodies Laughing” unfurls with unsettling, inevitable beauty. Elsewhere, tracks like “Colours Fly” and “Eyes & Mouth” expand the palette with Middle Eastern scales and taut percussive drive. The result is a challenging, conceptually ambitious album that rewards patient listening.

Key Points

• “Bodies Laughing” is best for its irregular, shifting harmony and inevitable-sounding progression.
• Cutouts excels in atmosphere and mood, favoring conceptual textures over conventional songcraft.

Themes

Critic's Take

The Smile sound like they veered fully into orchestral soundtrack mode on Cutouts, which leaves the record feeling like a collection of OST fragments rather than a tight album. The reviewer singles out “Zero Sum” and “Colours Fly” as moments that could have benefitted from more Tom Skinner input, and calls out “Eyes & Mouth” and “The Slip” for overlong guitar passages. Overall the best tracks on Cutouts are those that reintroduce Skinner’s drumming energy, but the album too often drifts into meandering jams. This is a record for diehards, not converts.

Key Points

• The best song(s) are where Tom Skinner's drumming returns to anchor the arrangements, notably "Zero Sum" and "Colours Fly".
• The album's strengths are orchestral textures and atmosphere, but it suffers from meandering instrumentation and repetitive lyrics.

Themes