Review

With *Tall Tales*, Thom Yorke once again charts a course into unfamiliar terrain – this time alongside veteran producer Mark Pritchard – and emerges with something at once hauntingly intimate and futuristically expansive. Cast against a backdrop of shifting electronic architectures, Yorke’s unmistakable voice flits between spectral falsetto and weary murmur, as though caught between despair and wonder. From the opening crackle of “A Fake in a Faker’s World,” there’s an air of uneasy anticipation. Layers of brittle beats and sinewy synth lines fold in on themselves, setting Yorke’s lyrics adrift: “We’re all unread, misread, in a world unduly fed.” It’s high art-pop, but art that wears its heart on its sleeve. Elsewhere, “Ice Shelf” feels like a glacial drift—a shimmering ambient interlude in which distant chords hover like lonely constellations, beckoning the listener to pause, to breathe. The album’s centrepiece, “Gangsters,” marries Pritchard’s crisp, understated funk sensibilities with Yorke’s lyrical barbs. A slinky bass pulse underpins a jittery rhythm, over which Yorke delivers a sly commentary on power and deceit: “They smile, they plot, they promise a lot.” It’s dance music for brooders, a siren call for those who long to move and think at once. In more subdued moments, *Tall Tales* offers dénouements of exquisite fragility. “This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice” strips back the beats almost entirely, leaving Yorke’s fragile croon to weave through plaintive piano chords. It’s heartbreak distilled, an elegy for connection lost. And when the album closes with “Wandering Genie,” those same melodies return, now refracted through a haze of digital echoes—Yorke’s whispered lament, “I am falling,” looping like a mantra of surrender. Sonically, Pritchard’s fingerprints are all over the project: warm analogue textures, clever glitch flourishes and the occasional shot of brass that cuts through the electronic wash. Yet it’s Yorke’s restless imagination that steers the ship. His penchant for the uncanny – the way he makes you feel both comforted and unsettled – remains as potent as ever. *Tall Tales* may not be the most immediate record in Yorke’s catalogue, but its rewards unfold with patient listening. It’s an album for twilight hours and half-lit rooms, where shadows dance and the mind wanders free. In an age of convenient pop satisfying our every algorithmic desire, Yorke and Pritchard deliver something that resists easy consumption: a collection of stories told in whispers and static, beckoning you to lean in and listen close.