Track Review - Skrting On The Surface by The Smile

Rating: 9.7/10

Nobody captures the quiet ache of desperation quite like Thom Yorke. In “Skrting on the Surface,” he, along with his band, returns to the emotional terrain charted in Radiohead’s “A Moon Shaped Pool” — fractured, weightless, and unfixable. “When we realize, / we have only to die, / then we’re out of here, / we’re just skirting on the surface.” Thom sings in a voice as fragile as breath — thin, wavering, almost translucent. It’s not resignation, but a kind of knowing. Acknowledging the inevitability of disappearance, he doesn’t reach for perfection. Instead, he lingers in the crack. Maybe beauty isn’t in what’s perfect — maybe it’s in what cannot be completed, fragile, yet touching.