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Cheer-Accident — You Smile / The Song Is Over
(Cuneiform Rune 546/547, 2026, 2CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2026-09-16

You Smile / The Song Is Over Cover art

Cheer-Accident has always been a hard band to pin down stylistically. Some of their albums are very much in what you might call the Avant Prog arena, while others lean towards melodic pop and others dive headlong into the avant garde. You Smile / The Song Is Over is an album that contains many of those elements within eleven tracks just over an hour in combined duration. Their music is often challenging, but in this case, the meaning of the word is somewhat different than for other challenging music. Cheer-Accident is a band that seems to deliberately challenge their audience to follow them, saying, “Oh, you think you like Cheer-Accident? We dare you to like this one!” I do not believe I am the only one who accepts the challenge, though I admit Trading Balloons tested limits. Parts of this album harken back to Salad Days, now that I think about it (and re-read my old review). It starts out sensibly enough with “Episode 34,” which sounds like a Cheer-Ax song as much as anything, featuring a looping rhythm part that could almost be a motorcycle revving up but almost certainly isn’t, then morphs into a strange off-kilter drum part with other instruments adding interlocking parts that somehow add up to a backing for a slow vocal line. The brass instruments eventually come in, along with a careening slide guitar. “Behind Your Smile” starts with a busy drum part, long chords from keyboards, and a vocal line that almost seems out of time, or out of a different time. But after a couple of minutes, we’re left with just the chords, though the drums fade in and out, then there’s a brief section where the vocals and the chords come together in a coordinated way, but that’s followed by several minutes of very quiet notes slowly oscillating, swelling very gradually from near-silence to very-quiet and then back again. It’s a very odd twelve and a half minutes. “They Won’t Talk to Me” takes the opposite path, starting with nearly static drones for three minutes before any movement is detectable, and eventually works up to a throbbing ostinato with brass and woodwind notes, then an actual chord progression. The rest of the album is similarly dissimilar, endlessly inventive, always unpredictable, occasionally frustrating.

Packaged with the studio album we get a wealth of live material from two separate performances: CheerAx Basement Concert - Chicago, April 2, 2022 and Reggie's - Chicago, September 16, 2023. These sets feature material from studio albums going back to their first LP, Sever Roots Tree Dies (1988), including The Why Album (1994), No Ifs Ands or Dogs (2011), What Sequel? (2006), Not a Food (1996), Fear Draws Misfortune (2009), Dumb Ask (1991), Vacate (2924), and more. As anyone who has seen the band live can attest, Cheer-Accident is unpredictable and amazing, taking their songs in unexpected directions and managing to be both spontaneous and incredibly tight. I’m not sure if this package is a good place to start if you’ve never heard Cheer-Accident, but it’s a trove of inventive oddities for those familiar with the band.

Filed under: New releases, 2026 releases

Related artist(s): Cheer-Accident

More info
http://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/you-smile-the-song-is-over-deluxe-version

 

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