The single – out now via XL Recordings – marks the trio’s first new music in 2023.
The Smile have shared Bending Hectic, a standalone track recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London earlier this year. The track sees Jonny Greenwood, Thom Yorke and Tom Skinner joined by the London Contemporary Orchestra with production by Sam Petts-Davies. The band first debuted the track during their performance at Montreux Jazz Festival last summer.
Bending Hectic follows on from The Smile’s debut album A Light For Attracting Attention which came out in May 2022. The track features artwork by Yorke and Stanley Donwood. The pair recently announced a forthcoming exhibition of their collaborative art projects. The Radiohead frontman and longtime collaborator Donwood are set to present The Crow Flies in London, showcasing a series of paintings co-created by the pair – who first met as art students at university. Donwood has designed the artwork for every Radiohead release since 1994’s My Iron Lung as well as the art for Yorke’s Atoms for Peace project and also The Smile.
The band head out on a tour of North America over this month and next, after which they’re set to head back into the studio to continue working on new material. In a recent interview, Greenwood shared that the three of them had “a big backlog of ideas” for The Smile. Earlier this year, the band confirmed that work on their sophomore album had begun.
Listen to Bending Hectic below.
