Critics rank The Smile's first album above every Radiohead side project

The Smile's first album, A Light for Attracting Attention, came out on XL on 13 May, and Pitchfork gave it 8.6 and Best New Music the day before. Ryan Dombal called it the best album yet from any Radiohead side project and the one that sounds most like the band itself, and bet that most listeners told it was the follow-up to A Moon Shaped Pool would have been glad to be taken in.

By 17 May Konstantinos Pappis of Our Culture was writing that everyone seemed agreed it was the best of the side projects, and that what struck him was how much it sounded like Radiohead. Craig Jenkins at Vulture called the trio the brightest star, or near enough, of the band's extended universe. In France, Les Inrocks called Nigel Godrich, who produced it, Radiohead's permanent sixth member, and took the opener, “The Same”, the one track with nobody on it but Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, for Radiohead crossed with Animal Collective.

The third member got much of the credit. Woody Delaney of Loud and Quiet called Tom Skinner's drumming the modest star of the record. David Gill of Riff, who gave the week's highest score, picked “Thin Thing”, which runs on Skinner's motorik beat, as the best song. Jenkins rated the Sons of Kemet drummer every bit as quick and exact as Phil Selway, only looser.

The critics split on “You Will Never Work in Television Again”. Dombal set it beside “2 + 2 = 5” as the rowdiest thing anyone in Radiohead had put out since Hail to the Thief; Janne Oinonen, who gave the album eight out of ten in The Line of Best Fit, counted it among its dullest moments.

Otherwise the complaints were mild. Pappis, who gave four stars and called it a great debut, doubted a newcomer would rank it above any Radiohead album bar perhaps Pablo Honey, and missed the plain pleasure of a hook. Aaron Paskin of Spectrum Culture thought “Open the Floodgates” aimless and too long.

That song is older than the band. Dombal noted that Radiohead soundchecked a version of it in 2006, in the In Rainbows years, and Michael Gallucci at Ultimate Classic Rock dated the closer, “Skrting on the Surface”, to 2009.

The warmest words went to “Free in the Knowledge”. Dombal would file it with “True Love Waits” and “Give Up the Ghost” among Radiohead's classic ballads, Oinonen set it in the line of “True Love Waits” and even “Fake Plastic Trees”, and Pappis likened it to something off The Bends, kept for the present day.

The first week's scores