Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke - Tall Tales (Album Review)
Wednesday, 14 May 2025
Written by Tom Morgan
Photo: Pierre Toussaint
While Thom Yorke needs no introduction, his ‘Tall Tales’ collaborator, Mark Pritchard, perhaps does. A veteran British electronic musician now based in Australia, Pritchard has been crafting beats of all genres since the early ‘90s, but is still a figure that few will know, other than those who’ve closely followed the releases of Warp Records.
Surprisingly, given his long-standing love of electronic music, this is Yorke’s first release on the esteemed UK label. But, rather than being an IDM record in the ‘classic’ Warp vein, ‘Tall Tales’ is more about deconstructed synth-pop, sitting somewhere between the art-tronica of Arca and Björk and the cold ‘80s output of OMD and Depeche Mode.
While there are copious drum machines and pretty synths here, see the Ballardian electronica of Back In The Game for evidence, few of these 12 songs progress according to any sort of linear, familiar pop logic.
Several, such as the sprawling and fractured title track, are as pointedly unusual as anything Yorke has ever been involved with.
One of the record’s core strengths is this ability to challenge and complement a voice that has become something of a monolith in modern alternative music. Yorke’s singular persona usually dominates whatever he’s featured on and, while ‘Tall Tales’ makes fine use of his voice’s textural qualities, it also feels like a proper fusion of personalities.
Pritchard’s minimalist beats, such as The White Cliffs’ sparse, methodical abstractions, bring out a different side of the Radiohead frontman, hitherto unheard in his electronic experiments. The bright, strange ‘Tall Tales’ marks a shift from Yorke’s signature skittish energy in favour of something glacial and patient — the dystopian being warped (pun intended) into something cautiously utopian.
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