Talk Talk (RIP Mark Hollis)

Brown's resume is utterly massive, but check out what other band he worked with...

Yup.. Bark Psychosis.

Spurred on by all this discussion, I dug out SoE, LS and MH and had a good long ironing session listening to all three. I didn't need to listen to Hex as I've learnt it note for note in my head over the years. Opinions? SoE is superb from end to end, and sounds natural, and lovely. LS is the least of the three, being too artificial, airless, and too much of its time, and the songs aren't as good as on the surrounding LPs, MH is nearly up there with SoE, only more natural (apart from those French voices on "A life" - why?). What I'd not done before was read the lyric sheets with all three - which made quite a difference actually. I'd not noticed the religious connotations before. Take the music away and some of the words would not be out of place in a church service.

Incidentally Nick, do you want a second CD of other BP stuff, the two Circa EPs and tracks from "Game Over"?

*stumbles in*

Apologies for getting here so late. Thanks for the kind words about what I've said in the past about this band. :) Hopefully I'll be thoughtful/useful to this discussion, too, though lack of time to think this over is going to be a big obstacle, and my writing's probably going to sprawl messily as a result. Anyhow ...

Lack of ladies on the thread? Well, that's just alt.music demographics for you. We've been out-numbered on other lists too. It's odd though, I'd think that Talk Talk would appeal to more women, since it is very warm and textured and generally positive in vibe, and isn't too far from, say, the music of Japan or Roxy music, both of whom have huge female followings.

Would you like Talk Talk, Kate? I think you would, but I don't expect you'd want to listen to them every day. Not many fans do that. I don't either. Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock aren't albums that you can just throw on the turntable any time you feel like it. And they can't easily be assessed in a record store listening booth, or on a tiny sound-file on a website. You're better off not listening at all. It would be like trying to decide how you felt about Chinese food in general after only having eaten two bites off of one dish! You can, however, get a pretty good sense of how Colour of Spring will sound if you listen to the little soundbites on those websites. So if you want to preview a Talk Talk album that way, choose that one instead. Like someone said : it is a nice transition album between pop and whatever it was that they became after pop.

Whoever compared them to fine wine had the right idea : something rare that should be savored, with your mind focused on it completely -- but also something that could would ruin you, or deaden you to the pleasant effects, if you tried to do it too often.)

As for Mark's voice. Well, if you can handle Bryan Ferry's (which it is often compared to, probably because they both prize texture over clarity) or David Sylvian's (who has a good voice, but deliberately sings "off" in an attempt to be more "interesting") then you shouldn't have any problem with Mark's voice. Since you come from a shoegazing background, Kate, you're already familiar with the concept of "voice as instrument" -- so if you don't like his voice, think of it as an instrument, and it might not bother you as much as it would if you thought of it as a voice!

Most people want you to play this loud, but my preferred way of listening to it is just after bedtime, with the headphones on, lights off, in bed, blankets pulled up, at a very low volume. That way, you give it your full attention, and your mind shifts into "sleep" mode faster. It has a way of embracing you if you do that, as opposed to assaulting you if you play it loud. I find "Spirit of Eden" to be very comforting. I often play it when I'm upset. The jarring moments echo my distress, but the lull that surrounds them then surrounds me too, and helps contain my feelings and makes me feel better. (It's almost like the feeling that you get when a good day follows three bad ones -- how in light of the bad days, the good one seems more hard-won, more profound).

About Bark Psychosis : I once compared Spirit of Eden with Hex and said that while Spirit had the feel of actual transcendence, Hex had the feel of a near-miss. But when I said "near miss" I didn't mean that the album was flawed, I meant that the mood of Hex was more unstable than Spirit of Eden's. If Spirit's course is a steady ascent into Heaven, Hex's course is more like a fumbling first flight. You can hear the band striving for lift-off in Bark's music -- the many tone changes, many rhythm changes, many mood changes -- a melodic scrambling around for the one thing that will get them airborne. (They do get airborne eventually, but only for a few moments. Moments I loved so much, that when I first heard them, I couldn't help rewinding the tape, playing those moments over and over again, instead of moving on to the next song). In some ways, that's what makes Hex the most listenable album of all those mentioned on this thread : it is a feeling that we all can relate to -- the striving and failing -- but with lyrics that are less blatant and music that is more melodic than most ofhter albums with "rise and fall" as their theme.

Graham sums the album's mood up well in the first song :

"you work so hard,
but you don't know what it's like
to feel so sure ..."

then, said almost as an afterthought, but repeated twice, with growing emphasis :

"it's gonna work out anyway.
it's gonna work out anyway."

And I agree. It does. In spite of their floundering, it's a beautiful album.

So I'd actually recommend Bark Psychosis "Hex" first to you, Kate.
Not only because it is more "human" than Talk Talk, but also because it is a bit more familiar in terms of sound, structure, themes and style. Also, you won't have any problems with the voice on this one : Graham sounds just like a dirty-dronerock boy -- probably because he _was_ one, up until a couple of years before recording this album. ;)

If you like Bark Psychosis, I think it will pave the way for you liking Talk Talk, too.

Ok, about Orang : if Talk Talk is an avoidance of noise, Orang is an avoidance of silence. You will not hear a more cluttered record -- let me rephrase that : you will not hear a more cluttered record that still holds together musically and melodically (stuff like Stockhausen is easily more cluttered, but nowhere near as pleasant to listen to). "Herd of Instinct" and "Fields and Waves" are musical collages, boh with strong emphasis on rhythm (Orang consisting of the two guys who were the rhythm section of Talk Talk, so it stands to follow). If you like Peter Gabriel's "Last Temptation" soundtrack, then you will probably adore "Herd of Instinct", since there are many parallels. In the same way that Gabriel immersed himself in the here-and-now to seek transcendence for that album, Orang do too. With Talk Talk, it's in the clouds. With Orang, it's deep down in the Earth. They sample freely from the folk music of just about every culture, and mix them all up into an "It's A Small World" approximation for the anti-Disneyland set. The first two songs of "Herd" rank among my all-time favorites. Whoever compared them to gamelan was on target. Though they don't have gamelan's frantic pace, they do share gamelan's love-affair with the clatter of cymbals, triangles, brushed drums and other tinny, rainy sounds. It's a sound you don't often hear in roCk music -- so it's like a tickle in the ear.

Sea and Cake sometimes manage that -- walking a line between Talk Talk and Orang. But that is a whole different subject and I've already worn everyone's patience out with such a big posting!

Hpe at least some of this made sense. Sorry for the length and lack of proof-reading!

this would be news to my wife, my kid, everyone in our apartment building and anyone passing by on the street below our windows.

now i've read this and all the linked reviews guess i'll have to check these guys out. don't think i've ever heard a single note by 'em.

I like this.

I always found Grace by Jeff Buckley to be a particularly good record for getting women to shag me...

It's funny because it came in a double CD set with "It's My Life" and I had to turn it off after 2 or 3 songs because it had dated so badly. (Which is odd cause I can still listen to The Teardrop Explodes, even though that is just as dated to the 80s.)

i think the teardrop explodes will be one of the most name-dropped bands of 2004. believe.

Zing! :) Wow Scott, you ARE an uber-fan! Maybe playing Talk Talk loud has a different effect than playing them softly? I'll have to give it a try ... and hey, having more than one copy of "Spirit" is understandable -- on lp format, the James Marsh illustrations look much more beautiful. (People who don't even _like_ the band have been known to squirrel away copies of those lps, just so they can have huge, high-quality versions of the James Marsh illustrations).

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> It was really interesting to me to see where early Spiritualized nicked all their ideas from.

There's a theory about how "Velvet Underground only had 100 fans, but all those fans went out and formed bands" ... Well, I think the same is true of Talk Talk -- only in their case, it wasn't that people formed bands after hearing them, it was that already-existing bands altered their sound dramaically after hearing them!

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> Don't know any of the names of any of the songs, cause I was, ha-hem, too busy to look at the tracklisting.

After thousands of listens, I still can't correctly name most of the tracks! Partially because they flow into each other (so it's hard to tell one song from another) and partially because I listen to the album all the way through (so I've never needed to know which songs to skip) ... As for the erotic possibilities of Talk Talk albums *blush* well yes. It is catnip for sensitive shoegazer types (both sexes), as much, if not moreso than Cocteau Twins.

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> It's funny because it came in a double CD set with "It's My Life" and I had to turn it off after 2 or 3 songs because it had dated so badly.

Errr, bad choice for accompanying cd! Much better would have been Colour of Spring. ("Life's What You Make It" hasn't dated so badly as "It's My Life"). Yeah, don't listen to both in the same sitting! Ironically, what dates the earlier albums so badly is often the wimpy-sounding drumming ... a contrast to the later albums, where Lee's drumming is so strong, so "right", so distinctive, and so timeless.

Glad to hear you like Talk Talk, Kate!

chris: my engineer friend has a copy of this (the spirit of eden one) on the coffee table in the studio -- my mistake was picking it up (i couldn't put it down!) it is quite simply one of the best magazine articles i've ever read. you'll never think of talk talk the same way.

Well, I think the same is true of Talk Talk -- only in their case, it wasn't that people formed bands after hearing them, it was that already-existing bands altered their sound dramaically after hearing them!

stripey: this is a great comment. the most interesting thing is that it continues to occur at relatively the same rate even (roughly) fifteen years after SoE.

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 ?