The Smile release “Bending Hectic”, recorded at Abbey Road

Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood's band The Smile have released “Bending Hectic” on XL Recordings, an eight-minute single that is on no album, their first single since their debut album, A Light for Attracting Attention, in May 2022. The animated video is by Sabrina Nichols and Stanley Donwood, and the artwork by Yorke and Donwood.

It is the song Yorke sang at Montreux last July with words he told the crowd he had written half an hour before, glad he could read them off the stand. Left off the live album of that show in December, it has been the song the band's followers have asked for ever since. The single is out the day before the North American tour opens in Mexico City, and once the tour is over the band plan to go back into the studio for more new music.

Sam Petts-Davies, who engineered A Moon Shaped Pool for Radiohead, produced the studio version at Abbey Road earlier this year, with the London Contemporary Orchestra on strings. It starts quietly on picked guitar and holds there for about six minutes before it breaks into a wall of noise.

“Bending Hectic”, the animated video by Sabrina Nichols and Stanley Donwood, June 2023· The Smilewatch on youtube →