Thom York and Mark Pritchard’s new single is not their first collaboration, but it is certainly their most exciting one yet.
The release of “This Conversation is Missing Your Voice” wasn’t necessarily a surprise. Yorke, who is best known for his role as the melancholic frontman, lead vocalist and songwriter for the English band Radiohead, and Pritchard, a prominent UK-based electronic and experimental music producer, have worked together on several notable occasions before. They released a single together titled “Back in the Game” in February of this year, and Yorke was featured on a track titled “Beautiful People” for Pritchard’s 2016 album Under the Sun. Pritchard has also put his own spin on several of Yorke’s songs in the past, releasing a remix of Radiohead’s “Bloom” in 2011, and another in 2019 for “Not The News,” a track off of Yorke’s solo album ANIMA.
However, their most recent single was accompanied by the unexpected announcement of a collaborative album titled Tall Tales—this will be Yorke’s first full-length collaboration with a single producer. The album will feature both of the singles released by Yorke and Pritchard this year and is set for release on May 5 alongside an accompanying visual album created by the Australian artist Jonathan Zawada, screening for a limited run in select theaters. The informational website for Tall Tales describes the endeavor as “a debut collaborative visual and audio cinema experience a decade in the making.”
If “This Conversation is Missing Your Voice” is any indication of what’s in store for the rest of the album, listeners are in for an exciting treat. The track unfolds in a layered, hypnotic fashion, swirling with punchy electronic beats that occasionally break into a more organic sound. The track’s layering is thick, combining softer sonic textures with the more prickly, courtesy of Pritchard’s intricate production.
Yorke’s trademark falsetto and notorious emotional vulnerability, both in his lyrics and his vocals are uniquely heightened by their contrast with Pritchard’s electronic soundscape. The production almost clashes with the softness of Yorke’s voice, and, rather than dominating the track, Yorke’s voice pulls the listener into the folds of a song that somehow manages to feel both foreign and familiar.
Yorke’s idiosyncratic vocal style can easily dominate any background track, and it often does throughout his catalogue, but here it is made more digestible by Pritchard’s masterful production, which is constantly shifting in sound, never fully settling into predictability. The result is an almost dream-like listening experience, with moments of sonic clarity juxtaposed against the more extended periods of electronic murkiness. The haunting nature of the lyrics is reinforced by the fact that its production never fully resolves to a unified sound. The song’s constant drift between clarity and distortion mimics the difficulty of making sense of a fractured conversation. It’s a captivating dynamic that speaks, as the title suggests, to the complexity of communication and a struggle to establish true connection.
The title of the song, “This Conversation is Missing Your Voice,” immediately brings to mind the theme of absence, gesturing at the notion of words unspoken and thoughts left unsaid. It’s an idea that matches well with the emotional undercurrent of the track, one that can be heard both in the production and in the content of the lyrics themselves.
The song’s lyrics do not provide listeners with a simple or straightforward narrative structure. Instead, their fragmented structure evokes feelings of longing and frustration. Lyrical phrases like “In need of some attention,” and “Why won’t you tell us what is bothering you?” point at the absence or loss of connection alongside a simultaneous desire for it.
Further, the lyrics seem to express a sense of mourning, as if Yorke is grieving something that can never fully be reclaimed. This sense of emotional emptiness is complemented well by Pritchard’s atmospheric production, with distant synth and delicate yet intentional percussion that underscores the song’s mournful quality. This unique meshing of the two artists’ styles is easily one of the most compelling aspects of the song.
“This Conversation is Missing Your Voice” definitely stands on its own as a clear example of Yorke and Pritchard’s artistic chemistry, but it also provides a tantalizing preview of what’s to come with the rest of Tall Tales. The experimental nature of this single suggests that the album will be full of sonic exploration, toeing the lines between the organic and the electronic, between the intimate and the expansive. The accompanying visual album could serve to enhance the immersive experience by converting it into a multi-sensory journey, perhaps just as thought-provoking and elusive as the music itself.
In essence, “This Conversation is Missing Your Voice” is an emotionally compelling collaboration between two of the most innovative artists in contemporary music, perfectly exhibiting and balancing both Yorke’s and Pritchard’s unique styles. It serves as a reminder that even in an age of constant noise, the absence of a voice can sometimes speak louder than words. Whether this song is merely a precursor to something more groundbreaking or simply a highlight in an already impressive partnership remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: Tall Tales is shaping up to be a remarkable album, and this song is just the beginning.
