Jonny dramatically muting the strings of his late-70s natural finish Les Paul Standard during a performance of Read The Room in Cleveland on July 11, 2023 (Ryan J).
Verse
Read The Room starts with just a guitar through a single-repeat delay. Well, technically two guitars: the same guitar part is recorded twice, with one recording panned hard left and the other panned hard right. Each one has its own delay. Jonny almost certainly used his Boss DD200, given the clarity of the delay sound (a Space Echo would be too warm in the highs). If we count quarters at ~61.5bpm, we can hear that the delay time is set for a single quarter note.
There’s also medium overdrive and a flanging effect added to Jonny’s guitar. The overdrive is probably Jonny’s Boss SD1, which he’s found a new affection for with The Smile (since 2007, he’s used a Boss OD3 with Radiohead instead of his older SD1). The flanger is almost certainly from the EarthQuaker Devices Pyramids visible on Jonny’s board in studio photos.
At 0:09, Thom’s bass guitar enters. Based on live usage, he’s probably playing his vintage, modified Gibson EB0. You can also see that bass in a photo from the the Wall of Eyes zine, which we included in our last post.
At 0:13, the drums enter, with Tom playing a stuttering pattern on the kick and snare, with occasional cymbals and open hihats for emphasis.
At 1:07, Jonny’s Sequential Prophet 5 REV4 adds a nice descending counter-melody (at least, it’s probably the Prophet based on studio photos and similarity to the live tone). When the synth enters, Jonny switches to plucking muted strings on his guitar for a totally percussive sound, which leaves space for the synth to stand out. At live shows, he mutes the strings rather dramatically, sliding his hand up and down the fingerboard to vary the sound of the percussive plucks.
At 1:37-1:41 some slightly open hihats lead us to the next section…
A photo from Jonny’s home studio in Oxford, showing his Sequential Prophet 5 REV4 nestled between a 1980s Sequential Prophet 600 and an Elektron Digitone Keys. This photo by Sam Petts-Davies was originally posted on the Smile’s twitter on October 31, 2023, but was definitely taken much earlier since the band were on tour at that time.
Chorus
At 1:41, the song switches to a softer “chorus” section, and a center-panned acoustic guitar becomes the main rhythm instrument. However, Jonny’s left and right panned electric guitars keep playing, adding subtle swelled notes. He’s probably using the “freeze swell” trick he first used for the Skirting On The Surface outro solo — more info in this post. However, it’s hard to say for sure, given the amount of woodwinds in this section. Robert Stillman’s clarinets and Pete Wareham’s flutes enter more clearly at 1:53. They add a rich, undulating texture through to the end of the chorus at 2:08.
For most of the chorus, we only hear a gentle hihat pattern from Tom. But at 2:00, we first hear cymbals, then the kick and stuttering snare from the verse enter to lead us back out of the chorus.
A photo of Pete Wareham playing flute in Abbey Road Studio 2, from the Smile’s Wall of Eyes zine. Wareham previously collaborated with Tom Skinner’s past band Sons Of Kemet.
Verse 2 and Chorus 2
At 2:08-2:11, the start of the next verse, we briefly hear the main riff on the single acoustic guitar from the chorus. Then Jonny’s two hard-panned electric guitars return at ~2:11. This verse (2:11-2:40) mainly repeats the instrumentation from first verse, but with more cymbals and more intense vocal delay. However, we do get a left-panned clarinet playing the counter-melody at 2:25-2:36, replacing the synth from the first verse. We also hear some fun sliding noises — seemingly from a “delay time” knob being turned — at 2:26-2:30.
The second “chorus” (2:41-3:11) brings back the acoustic guitar, swelling electric guitars, woodwinds, and gentle hihats from the first chorus. The main difference is that the winds play a richer texture, and Jonny’s two electric guitars start to add spacier delayed notes at ~3:00 (possibly with his Boss RE-202 Space Echo pedal).
A photo of Jonny in the live room at Abbey Road Studio 2 from March or April of 2023 (Sam Petts-Davies). We can see his EHX Freeze, Boss SD1, Boss DD-200, and Boss RE-202 in the bottom row. His EQD Pyramids is at the end of the top row. For more info on his pedalboards, check out Jonny’s page.
Coda
The coda begins at 3:12 with a right-panned single electric guitar from Jonny and a cymbal crash from Tom. Jonny plays a riff that initially feels pretty simple, until you notice that he keeps skipping eighth notes. There’s a few ways to divide it up, but the full pattern is 22 eighth-notes long (two measures of 11/8, though it’s easier to count as two measure of 6/4 with the last eighth note or each measure skipped, which also feels closer to the way the band play it).
Unlike the previous sections, this guitar has no delay or other effects. Instead of delay, Jonny’s riff makes use of open strings to give a fuller, multi-voice sound. On the studio recording, his B-string is detuned to an A for this section, allowing him to add an open “A” ringing over his riff. This is pretty notable, because the song’s main riff used an open B-string in standard tuning! At live shows, Jonny doesn’t bother with the high “A”, presumably because he has no time to detune the B-string or to switch guitars. So that’s a little extra studio magic!
Jonny most likely played his late-70s natural finish Les Paul Standard for most or all of the studio recording. He’s seen with other guitars in a few studio photos, but his tone on this track has a richness that’s characteristic of his Les Paul through his Super Reverb — particularly his clean tone in the code.
The cymbal crash from the start of the coda slowly fades from 3:12-3:19. Then at 3:20, a couple of snare hits call in a new pattern of kick, snare, and closed hihat. The pattern is reminiscent of the “motorik” beat found in a lot of Krautrock, with a snare on 3. But the skipped eighths in the riff make the beat much more varied than in a traditional Krautrock track.
Thom adds a distorted bass guitar at 3:23, mirroring Jonny’s riff an octave below. He’s probably using his EarthQuaker Devices Plumes pedal for the added punch. In live footage, we can also see Thom and Jonny grab plectrums at the start of the coda. Thom may have been using the Plumes earlier in Read The Room, but the plectrum really emphasizes the punch.
When Thom’s vocal re-enters at 3:45, there’s a ton of vocal layers and reverb. The layers all seem to match the main vocal, so it might a dual delay setting from Thom’s Strymon DIG pedal, albeit with some heavier reverb added to the delays. At live shows played after the Abbey Road recording sessions, Thom had a drone from his Moog Matriach playing during this section, but it’s not present on the album.
At 4:05, Jonny adds a second electric guitar layer, panned hard-left and playing patterns with a new single-repeat delay. At live shows, he relied on Thom to keep the riff going. But on the studio recording, his right-panned riff guitar keeps playing too.
Tom brings back the cymbals in earnest from 4:13-4:48, bringing the song to its climax. Then, after a choirs of Thom say “everybody thinks so” at 4:48, the cymbals and vocals drop out (with a long vocal delay fade-out). The guitar, bass, and drums continue up until the track ends abruptly with another statement of “everybody thinks so”.
In this shot, from the The Smile’s show in Cleveland on July 11, 2023 (Ryan J), Jonny’s tech can be seen tapping in a dotted-eighth delay during the start of the coda section. Jonny only uses the delay during the second half of the coda, but his delay time is different from the rest of the song, so it needs to be adjusted while he plays the initial coda riff. Thom can be seen with his vintage Gibson EB0.