From the magazine Rod Liddle

The repetitiveness made me cry with boredom: Mark Pritchard and Thom Yorke’s Tall Tales reviewed

But there is just about enough beauty in the album’s middle section to convince you that this music can seduce as cannily as it can sedate

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 10 May 2025
issue 10 May 2025

Grade: B+

You are in the wrong hands here for what is a homage to this duo’s favourite electronic music. The only Radiohead album I like is the guitar-driven Pablo Honey (and I wasn’t terribly mad on that to be honest.) My inclination is to mark down the genre itself, for its wafting and beeping and farting portentousness, all the way back to Stockhausen. But I suppose one has to put such prejudices aside.

What we have is Yorke’s anguished, puppy-dog falsetto, occasionally tenor and on one song contralto, with Pritchard’s sweeping aural soundscapes and clever but often annoying rhythms. At times the repetitiveness made me cry with boredom, but I do understand that repetitiveness is part of the shtick. There are several moments when it all works rather beautifully, such as with the very pretty ‘The White Cliffs’, or the playful Tangerine Dream-ish ‘Gangsters’. Only on these and ‘The Spirit’, though, do you get a sense of what this album could have been if indulgence had been shelved for a brief while and such disdained bourgeois interlopers as tonal melody allowed into the party.

Elsewhere, Yorke provides a number of seven-note refrains, repeated over and over. Couldn’t you, once in a while, Thom, stretch to maybe eight notes? Never mind. There is just about enough beauty in the album’s middle section to convince you that this music can seduce as cannily as it can sedate; that we do not need the electronic evocation of either cathedrals or glaciers to convince us that the music we are listening to has a grandeur. Which is what, I would guess, these two talented souls were looking for.

Illustration Image

Want more Rod?

SUBSCRIBE TODAY
This article is for subscribers only. Subscribe today to get three months of the magazine, as well as online and app access, for just $15.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in