Talk Talk: Spirit of Eden V.S. Laughing Stock

"Spirit of Eden Vinyl Reissue from EMI coming early April with 24bit WAV files on Bonus DVD"

well fuck it might be time to stick my sacds on ebay then

I would have probably voted for 'Spirit Of Eden' in this, but for me this is definitely a bit of a tough one to call.

I was listening to these albums again for the first time in a while recently. I still rate them both about equally, but would give LS the slight edge because of "New Grass". The last ninety seconds of that song is the most profoundly moving passage of music I've ever heard, although even saying that is to banalise it, without wishing to be too lofty. :)

I may have mentioned it somewhere upthread, but I'd heard that song so many times before I ever really even noticed the bass line. It was one of the closest things I've ever had to a true musical epiphany. Now I turn it way up and get lost in the low end.

Something I wrote about that song in my blog a couple of years ago:

Talk Talk - New Grass
This is the song I'd play to someone just about to kill himself. No. Maybe that should say that's the song I would play to myself if I was about to leave this world on my own. The beauty of this song transcends the appeal death could have for someone who has lost all hope. It is the warmest, most caressing, most soothing song on Laughing Stock. It's a holy song, the lyrics use Christian terminology: sacrament, Christ, heaven, vow. Mark Hollis is English, if he had been from India he would sing about Vishnu or Krishna, the words and names don't matter. It's all about the music. What reaches our brain via the ears directly without the interference of the ratio. Call it truth, love or anything. I think I would call it trust.

both equally overrated

I first listened to Spirit of Eden at a time of crisis in my life. It was the year I graduated college and my first love/first relationship ended. I was at rock bottom. Spirit of Eden was the most deeply moving and spiritually cathartic album I had ever heard.

Around the same time, I had also listened to similar albums such as Hex (Bark Psychosis) which became one of my favorite albums and is, for me, perfect late-night listening and the quintessential winter album. At this time, I listened to Laughing Stock, as well, and, although its instrumental complexities were entrancing, it simply did not speak to my emotions the way Spirit of Eden did.

Spirit of Eden is still the album I go to when I'm at my lowest and searching for my path.

It's one of my Desert Island albums, alongside
A Storm in Heaven (The Verve)
No Other (Gene Clark)
Lazer Guided Melodies (Spiritualized)

is "I Believe in You" the greatest song of ALL TIME?

...spirit...

it is yes

confirmed, thank you

love this lip-synced nod-along

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16mDl6dlfmE

there used to be a fantastic fan-made video for I Believe in You composed of shots from a really old black-and-white TV show but it's sadly gone now

is it this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIORDxFPccQ

nah the band aren't in it... I meant TV show from like the 1950s

this one's pretty cool though!

god, i always thought it was

spirit...

eden...

spirit...

didn't realize it was "how long"

xp f hazel actually that video i posted gets a little weird! there's RT footage in the middle!

uh...i don't know, sorry

talk talk rules

i have been a fan for a while, but things kicked up a gear a couple weeks ago

if RT is astroturfing with fan-made talk talk videos the state is getting really deep

just to go along with the thread, though, "after the flood" may be as good.

i love the drums. i have been playing drums a lot, throughout my life. talk talk drums are so fucking good

"new grass" drums especially, too, jfc. very good

and NOT in a technical sense, or an "unusual" sense (different time signatures). i mean, yes to those too, well done talk talk drummer(s?), but first and foremost i just mean their intuitive drive, the heart of it all. a very tasteful drummer, whoever it is. sorry if it's a session drummer, or a bill-berry-esque-legend. i don't really know. but they're great.

make sure you spend some time with the trinity of flawless b-sides... it's getting late in the evening, for what it's worth, and john cope

which ones do you mean?

treat me like a dope, i'm made out of soap

just paul harris hittin' things

ffs ruined it by merging the bassist and the drummers' names, nightmare

and now a double apostrophe fail. better put some talk talk on to recover

talk' talk'

make sure you spend some time with the trinity of flawless b-sides... it's getting late in the evening, for what it's worth, and john cope

Was listening to these just yesterday, 'For What It's Worth' in particular I really love, I think it suggests another direction they could've headed off in at that point.

Those two Colour of Spring b-sides would have been better on the album than April 5th and Chameleon Day, which are two of my least favourite songs they did. I also prefer Pictures of Bernadette to I Don't Believe in You, but that might have made the album more rock-oriented than they would have wanted.

April 5th and Chameleon Day, which are two of my least favourite songs they did.

interestingly, these are the two songs harris doesn't play on!

i will definitely be checking out the b-sides today, but holding off until night time is the right time

i immediately abandoned my plan and listened via youtube. :)

they sound really great, thanks for the recommendation. i do find it hard to approach later-era talk talk songs in isolation, though. even the songs i absolutely adore from laughing stock and spirit of eden, i need to the rest of the album to lead me up to them.

ugh, the outro on "it's getting late in the evening" is excellent. i may just start integrating this into my Colour of Spring playlist

You know, I've never really thought about it before, because the music itself is more than enough to think about, but the title "Spirit of Eden" possesses a pretty profound double meaning. On the one hand, there's the notion of capturing the pastoral innocence of paradise/Eden. On the other is the idea that we are all ghosts, spirits, haunting what used to be Eden.

or that the idea of eden haunts us, too

Yeah, all that good stuff.

for me, though, it's all about the way he says "spirit..." in I Believe In You. he doesn't actually say "eden" afterward (for a long time i thought he did), but it hangs in the air along with "spirit" because of the album title. and there's something so sad in that word, sung in that way, alone. "...spirit..."

the idea that we are all ghosts, spirits, haunting what used to be Eden.

This has always been our interpretation of it.

wtf april 5th and chameleon day are both incredible

or in the spirit of eden, where mankind fell from grace as I read it

April 5th and Chameleon Day sound to me like they are reaching for the Spirit of Eden sound without getting it yet. The former has an irritating programmed percussion part and the latter has a weird quasi-wind-quartet intro and outro that they would soon replace with acoustic instruments.

like they are reaching for the Spirit of Eden sound without getting it yet

this for me is 100 percent the appeal of colour of spring but one's mileage varies i guess

no album with 'life's what you make it' on it can ever be anything less than a great album imo

I love the transitional quality of April 5th and Chammelon Day - the band finding all that breath and space and not feeling the need to fill it.

The results of this poll will never stop amusing me. I actually voted for LS but I changed my mind last night to SoE and will change it again. I actually think MH is my not-polled answer though. Well, it was last night when I listened to all three. It changes all the time.

Both are perfect, Laughing Stock a wee bit more so.

the organ tone on laughing stock is one of music’s finest sounds

I bought these two records and Mark Hollis right when they came out, and I agree that the solo album is the best of the three. Even details like the room tone at the opening and closing are perfectly timed. The album is an unexpected mixture of warmth and austerity; I credit it with helping me though the depressive year when it was issued.

When you listen to records as many times as I have heard these, you have to be honest with yourself about what you feel is not working. I've always found Taphead and Runeii on Laughing Stock a little arid. In a way, the progression didn't become clear to me until 1998.

April 5th and Chameleon Day sound to me like they are reaching for the Spirit of Eden sound without getting it yet. The former has an irritating programmed percussion part and the latter has a weird quasi-wind-quartet intro and outro that they would soon replace with acoustic instruments.

― Halfway there but for you, Thursday, 5 November 2020 18:16 (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

wtf the programmed percussion on "April 5th" is brilliant