Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke | Tall Tales Review

By Bea Willis

There’s a specific kind of silence that follows the unraveling of a myth. It’s not the hush of reverence but the vacancy of disillusionment, when the tale that once held a people together reveals its stitches, and the spell breaks. Tall Tales, the collaborative album from producer Mark Pritchard and vocalist Thom Yorke, lives in that silence. It speaks from the borderlands between story and structure, faith and fracture, lullaby and lament; a place where nothing quite holds anymore, and everything feels just out of reach.

This is not an album of answers. It is, rather, a sonic mirror fractured into archetypal shards that reflect back the loss of shared cultural scripts, the unease of modernity, and the inner tremors of an individual attempting to feel in a numbed-out age.

Yorke’s voice, ever a vessel of beautiful unease, hovers like a specter above Pritchard’s meticulous sonic terrain. His falsetto isn’t so much sung as exhaled, at times barely touching the ground. There is a psychic tension in the music, weariness, and vigilance. It reminds me of the mythic Cassandra, cursed to see truth no one would believe. Yorke sings not with hope but with haunted clarity, as though he’s spent too long staring into the wrong end of history.

Take “A Faker in a Faker’s World,” the opening track. Its angular synthwork recalls the cold cinematics of John Carpenter, but it’s filtered through a softer, more impressionistic lens  to create less horror and more entropy. The track pulses and glitches like a transmission from a corrupted archive, while Yorke murmurs of illusions within illusions. The song’s structure is elusive: more like a dream you’re trying to reassemble upon waking than a traditional composition. This destabilization is deliberate as the musical grammar itself mirroring a cultural psyche that no longer trusts linearity or clarity.

On “The Hollowed Year,” a rare moment of warmth bleeds through, but even this is tinted with melancholy. The harmonies unfold like light filtering through a dense canopy, gorgeous, yes, but uncertain in their direction. Pritchard’s production feels organic here, almost moss-covered: wooden percussion, analog tape hiss, and Yorke’s voice layered like memory. It evokes not nostalgia, but the melancholy of remembering a time when nostalgia still functioned.

At its core, Tall Tales is about disorientation. Its track titles suggest stories, yet what we encounter are fragments: poetic non-sequiturs, harmonic spirals, lyrical ellipses. Yorke references symbols like masks, machines, shadows, but refuses to bind them into moral parables. Pritchard’s production matches this philosophy: synths evaporate before they fully form; grooves threaten to lock in but dissolve instead into ambience or static. The album denies us closure and, in doing so, reflects the experience of living in a time when every dominant narrative seems to be unraveling in real time.

Jung spoke of the need for myth not as escapism but as scaffolding for psychic integration, a way to hold the chaos of life within meaning-bearing structures. In this light, Tall Tales becomes not a myth, but a map of the mythless. It’s an aural document of what it feels like to live post-revelation, post-faith, post-script. Not without feeling, but raw with the ache of uncontainable feeling.

What’s perhaps most remarkable is the emotional restraint. Yorke, who in earlier projects might have turned paranoia into anthem or grief into catharsis, here whispers rather than cries. Pritchard, whose beats in past works could be propulsive and ecstatic, reins in momentum in favor of spectral textures. The result is not cold, but controlled, a cultivated interiority, like the architecture of a dream you can’t quite name but somehow understand.

Listening to Tall Tales, I found myself recalling the ancient function of keening with the mourning song, half-sung, half-sobbed, used to guide souls from this world into the next. There is a keening here, albeit one mediated through wires and synths, filtered through cultural detritus and digital ghosts. It does not guide us toward resolution, but offers a kind of company within the fog.

And that may be the truest offering Tall Tales gives: not answers, but companionship. A score for wandering, not arriving. A musical myth for the age after myth, full of longing, fragmentation, and the strangely human act of singing through the static.

Artist: Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke
Album: Tall Tales
Label: Warp Records

Release Date: May 9, 2025

About the author

Bea Willis

Author

With an unwavering passion for music that began at the tender age of five, I embarked on a journey of self-expression through the piano, later expanding my repertoire to the guitar and the art of singing. As a seasoned performer in cozy coffee shops and harmonious choir ensembles, I've immersed myself in the diverse tapestry of musical genres, seeking to uncover the intricate qualities that strike a chord within our souls.

Beyond my personal experiences, my journalistic pursuits have led me to explore the stories and inspirations behind the melodies we hold dear. As a music journalist, I aim to delve into the heart of each composition, shedding light on the creative minds that have shaped the soundscape of our lives.

In my downtime, you can find me serenading my loyal canine companion with heartfelt tunes on the guitar or indulging in retail therapy to enhance my ever-growing wardrobe. Songwriting holds a special place in my heart, and I yearn for the day when I can share my creative talents with the world. Until then, my passion for uncovering the emotional power within music continues to drive my insightful reviews and analyses, as I journey through the rich landscape of melodies that move us.