In "Back in the Game," the snaking, creeping processional that heralded
Tall Tales,
Thom Yorke is in sinister form, something like a phantasmal
Howard Devoto, announcing "Back to 2020 again/It's either this or jump/If you know what I mean." It sets a bleak tone for an album
Yorke and
Mark Pritchard began making during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Between then and the arrival of
Tall Tales,
Yorke released three LPs with
the Smile and composed the soundtrack for the film
Confidenza, while
Pritchard issued
MP Productions, an EP of six tracks that went in as many directions. Despite its piecemeal half-decade gestation,
Tall Tales is a coherent, if often cryptic joint effort. The duo venture far beyond their previous connection on "Beautiful People," a central track on
Pritchard's 2016 album
Under the Sun. Instrumentation is split, with both, joined by engineer
Steve Christie, playing an array of keyboards including vintage synthesizers. Combined with taut drum programming, much of the material evokes everything from
Kraftwerk and
Cluster to
Martin Hannett,
Chris & Cosey, and
Andy Stott. Eerie drones, misshapen voices, and other atmospheric elements abound, as do well-placed accoutrements such as woodwinds and idiophones. Still, the machine rhythms reign supreme, pulsating, oscillating, and probing through the confrontational "A Fake in a Faker's World," the sardonic "Gangsters," and the exasperated "This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice." Two of the more transfixing songs feature
Yorke using his lower register. On the torpid ballad "The White Cliffs," he duets with himself, switching from nightmarish visions recounted in falsetto to stern if soft baritone responses like "This is your punishment" and "Everything is out of our hands."
Yorke's lead voice thrums throughout "The Men Who Dance in Stag's Heads," a highlight inspired by the Benjamin Myers' The Gallows Pole, a novel about a counterfeiting gang in 18th century Yorkshire. Lines such as "We sign their papers, we line their pockets" lie gently atop elaborate bedding of pump organ, spare percussion, oboe, and more, landing somewhere between
Ivor Cutler,
the Velvet Underground, and early
Roxy Music. Nothing either musician has done before -- not even
Yorke's
Bryan Ferry impersonations on the
Velvet Goldmine soundtrack -- sounds like it. The same goes for "Happy Days," a carnivaleseque oompah march suited for the sound system at
Banksy's Dismaland.
Tall Tales' accompanying film by
Pritchard collaborator
Jonathan Zawada casts the album in a lurid, more unsettling light. ~ Andy Kellman
