The Smile on BBC Radio 6

The Smile are booked as Saturday headliners at the 6 Music Festival with Wall of Eyes just out, and most of the talk with Lauren Laverne is about the London Contemporary Orchestra, who play the string arrangements on the record and are coming on stage for the festival. Doing it in a studio is one thing, the band say, and wrangling scores and violins live is another.

A lot rests on one conductor. They describe him as impossible to faze, able to take whatever they throw at him and to turn whatever nonsense they are speaking into something an orchestra can act on. Classical musicians who can work spontaneously like that are not what an outsider expects, and it is part of why they keep going back.

They work very fast, Thom Yorke fastest of all. An idea can be off the ground within half an hour, and the rule of thumb has become that take three is the one. Most of it happens at Jonny Greenwood's studio, where the interview takes place, and the plan for a project that began in lockdown in 2020 is to keep going.