Album Review: Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke, Tall Tales

This is a marvellous album altogether, teaming as it does the prolific Thom Yorke with the equally productive Warp Records maestro, Mark Pritchard.

Indeed, it’s Warp themselves who provide perhaps the most spot-on description of Tall Tales, summarising it as “landscapes of synth-pop, prog, dub, ‘70s synth, Joe Meek, Ivor Cutler, Library, kraut and classic Warp™️”.

Lead single ‘Back In The Game’ sets out the record’s wonderfully macabre stall – Yorke’s misshapen vocal trekking across scything synths and a ‘Staying Alive’ bass line. The track is accompanied by a fever dream video, created by Jonathan Zawada, whom Pritchard and Yorke consider a third member of the group. In fact, an accompanying, feature length film will be released in tandem with the album.

That’s quite the generous side order to the tasty main course. Sizzling opener ‘A Fake In A Faker’s World’ cleans the palate for the otherworldly ‘Ice Shelf’, before the record attains lift-off with ‘The White Cliffs’ and second single ‘This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice’.

The title track may be the best damn thing on the record, wild caper as it is, but the competition is fierce. Driving it especially close is the Beckettian martial romp ‘Happy Days’, while ‘The Men Who Dance In Stag’s Heads’ competes on song title alone.

Out now

9/10