“Everybody, run, it looks like rain,” drawls Thom Yorke over the mechanised beat and lurid, tuba-aping synths of “Back in the Game”. The first single from the progtronic Tall Tales – the Radiohead frontman’s first full-length electronic collaboration with Yeovil-born producer/musician Mark Pritchard – offers disquieting fanfare for a dense, dystopian album. A record full of existential jitters, it addresses themes of human greed, mendacity, disconnection and the climate crisis. Vintage keyboard effects slip, slide and splash in looping melodies, like chunks of ice caps tumbling into the sea, while Yorke’s angsty vocal drifts at a sorrowful altitude.
It is, of course, a myth that Yorke only became interested in electronic music when Radiohead were working on 2000’s Kid A. While it’s true that they asked experimental electronic label Warp to send them their entire catalogue in 1999, Yorke was already familiar with their early releases, having played them as a student in Exeter back when he was picking up DJ gigs. It makes sense. The alienation and emotional askewness of the genre is a perfect fit for Yorke’s lyrical themes, counterbalancing what he has irritably described as the “prettiness” of his voice.
