Talk Talk (RIP Mark Hollis)

Hey Scott, here's an excerpt from the interview Chris mentioned that relates well to what we've been talking about :

" ... We came up with the conclusion, in the end,that was either put on it, “Please play quietly” or, as I tried to point out to Mark, that you’ve got to leave people to their own resources ..."

:)

"I loathe the post-rocky cd with relaly long boring tracks, lead singer sounds as if he has longblonde hair and possibly should relocate to a Christian tinband?"

(luckily he likes the 'ardkore, skeptics, PiL & disco inferno I sent with it)

i've never heard 'laughing stock' and the two bits i've heard off 'spirit of eden' were the bits on the 'best of' that came out in 1990 (u know when 'its my life' was a hit again ?) that were bstrdzd edits just kind of stuck on at the end.
but... i didn't like the two bits i heard.

maybe i give the whole thing a listen in the dark when i'm a bi glum.
that's the idea is it ?

on the norman records update they mention Bed as a band that is an exact duplicate of laughing stock era tt. has anyone heard them? any thoughts?

I have indeed heard them thanks to Doug Watson -- there's a definite, obvious similarity, though I would ascribe it mostly to how the feller sings and the minimal arrangements rather than the exact sound. On that level, though, they work for me more than, say, Elbow.

What's the word that means being nostalgic for things you've never experienced? Thats what TT does for me.

(I picked up a vinyl re-issue of TCoS over the weekend. Beautiful pressing. Simply beautiful).

The reason why TCoS stands out for me is that it exhibits the genius of Talk Talk in a somewhat embryonic but no less impressive state. I betcha the same kind of people who like TCoS best are also the sort who prefer Isn't Anything.

the point

I'm reminded of something I said once, to fred maybe (on here?), about the beach boys and the way people from certain musical backgrounds engage with 'pretty' and 'highly spiritual' music. this is clearly pretty complicated, though, especially with people like melissa who have a much deeper engagement with that terrain.

made by josh apparently interested me then and interests me now because i really think that there are certain musical qualities--obv shifting ones over time, given the shifting contexts--that evoke "spiritual", "transcendent", etc. i suppose one could even set up a kind of experiment to determine the superlatives that people attach to certain music, but i suppose this would have to presume a large enough sample of people with exceedingly similar experiences with music.

i think its obvious that TT brings an enormous amount of talent and skill to their work, which is why i can say without reservation that i'm a fan, but i think it's a combination of this skill AND the particular metier...the particular nature of t he work...that produces the sort of (what seems to me) hyberbole or at least...peculiar range of superlatives. this can be illustrated better perhaps by responses to lesser bands with similar aims. maybe even with U2...i dunno.

teasing out what musical qualities track to these adjectives would be a worthwhile endeavor which i suppose few living rock critics (or whomever) would be prepared to undertake

there are albums and films i love despite their being adored in the laziest terms by all kinds of poseurs...

i think the battery of adjectives applied to their later albums actually does the band and its music a disservice

you can stretch this comment to include a good chunk of the sort of music thats covered in the wire etc

Maybe that's why the critical fawning doesn't bug me (although the gave-it-two-listens negative reviews are still funny after all these years).

(BTW, don't mind Matt and I - we're friends from way back.)

the mythology is that it was ignored completely and then rediscovered thanks to tastemakers like jim o'rourke etc in the mid 90s (not a long path to rediscovery mind, but still)

but is this actually true? certainly the emergence of post rock etc. gave the album a new home, a new sense of approachability etc., but i would think a symapthetic audience would have existed in 1991 as well, however small

Some contemporary reviews (scroll downward) It most certainly was not ignored completely -- Melody Maker, for one, ran a big interview with Hollis, a follow-up technical interview with Brown and Hollis and a review all within a couple of weeks of each other.

From NME, September 28, 1991

TALK TALK
Laughing Stock (Verve)
Once upon a time Mark Hollis was the intense-eyed ranting lad who shouted "All you do is talk talk !". Then he became the anthemically melancholy lad who moaned "Its my life !" and never looked back from a life of anthemic melancholy.

As time goes by, Mark Hollis' music has slipped into a vat of dark, brooding melancholy so deep that even David Sylvian would join Right Said Fred rather than partake of its glummo brew.

In despair did EMI release an anthemically melancholy singles album and in more despair an anthemically melancholy dance remix album - an act on a par with releasing an Ambient House mix of Sham 69's "Hurry Up Harry", only not as interesting.

Now Hollis has gone to Verve and recorded "Laughing Stock" with 23 acoustically-oriented bass and organ and drum people. There is a slight jazz feel to this record. There are elements of soundtrack ambience. There are songs called "After The Flood". There are lyrics like "A hunger uncurbed by nature's calling". The whole thing is unutterably pretentious and looks over its shoulder hoping that someone will remark on its 'moody brilliance' or some such. It's horrible.

(4 out of 10)

David Quantick

what's funny is that certain phrases in hollis's lyrics DO irritate me, but only when i can make them out. it doesnt seem to be an album that really puts much pressure on the lyrics to signify anyhow.

I know that John McEntire of Tortoise namechecked SOE or LS in The Wire around '95. But I don't think he was a fan much before that, as I know the guy who turned him onto them only a few years previously...

1. i think the battery of adjectives applied to their later albums actually does the band and its music a disservice

amateur!st, i've been trying to divine what you and other threaders mean by this, and i'm still not quite sure. (i'm assuming it's not a "they don't understand it like i do" type of reaction.)

2. What on earth is that thing on the cover of the Mark Hollis album? It looks like a ferret trapped in a can of sardines.

?