Thom Yorke and Mark Pritchard share new single “Back in the Game” and creepy video

Thom Yorke and regular collaborator Mark Pritchard have just shared a collaborative single, “Back in the Game.” The song, which was a staple in Yorke’s setlists on his 2024 Everything solo tour, is dark and undulating and just a little creepy.

“Back in the Game” is made even creepier by the lurid, deeply saturated music video by Jonathan Zawada, who says:

On first hearing the original demo of ‘Back In The Game’ I was immediately struck by the deranged bassline that made me think of the final scene of Staying Alive where John Travolta is cockily strutting through the New York streets but I saw it with a more sinister overlay. Slowly a version of that visual arose around a character wearing a kind of giant parade head with a fixed expression of mania stuck on their face, such that you couldn’t tell if their endless march was one of aggression or celebration. The more I paid attention to the lyrics the more details began to fill themselves out and the overall concept began to form of parade of many characters marching past a building from within which everything was being thrown out of a window and into a giant bonfire.

Ultimately the film for ‘Back In The Game’ ended up depicting a sort of blind celebration taking place as civilization slowly deteriorates around it, a kind of progression through regression. Overlaid onto this is an exploration of how and where we choose to place value in our collective cultural expression and how we collectively confront major cultural shifts in the 21st century.

Is more to come? Let’s hope. Watch the video below.