Tall Tales

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.

All in, Tall Tales captures these two veterans in great form, locking into a sound that plays to their strengths while differing from anything they’ve done before – moody, enveloping, surreal in effect, but emotionally potent.

At times, Yorke moonwalks into self-parody with lines such as, “What's the purpose?” But such sixth-formery is compensated by the gorgeous melody and elegant phrasing of “Bugging Out Again”, so beautiful it's hard to hear with your eyes open.

Several tracks here resemble conceptual art installations. .... But others movie in a poppier direction. .... Best of all might be "The Men Who Dance In Stags Heads". .... With help from harmonised backing vocals, woodwind countermelodies and some dreamy electronic flourishes, it somehow manages to turn this dark tale of the rural poor's response to the Industrial Revolution into something sunny, joyous and beatific. [Jun 2025, p.38]

A sometimes otherworldly, frequently tongue-in-cheek, and occasionally surprisingly punchy album. It’s a distinctive part of the Yorke canon which also stands apart as a musical reference-point marking the convergence of two creative minds.

This collaboration feels like a specific crystallisation of his {thom Yorke's] enduring love of electronic music, its release on Warp fitting given how much Autechre and Aphex Twin informed Radiohead’s Kid A-era pivot. [Jun 2025, p.78]

Starts out as you might expect from an electronic album made by Yorke mid-pandemic: a sort of cold, edgy, distant electronica for a cold, edgy, distant world. .... But in-between, the album takes some unexpected turns. .... An album that resonates in uncertain times. [May 2025, p.104]

What Tall Tales lacks in razzle-dazzle it makes up for with risky maneuvers, particularly Yorke’s in the vocal booth.

Only a couple moments deviate into feeling overly harsh or stupidly indulgent; feel free to skip “Happy Days,” which gnashes along in a deranged death march, as Yorke repeats the phrase “Happy days/Death and taxes.” (OK, we get bored of reruns with the Fonz too, but it’s not that bad.) Paradoxically, the track with a title that sounds like a sketch-comedy parody of a song on a moody Thom Yorke solo record – “The Men Who Dance In Stags Heads” – ends up being a truly transcendent moment.