Talk Talk (RIP Mark Hollis)

the bark psychosis album may be released through the web!

Mitch you probably don't want to hear this but I reckon you should have started with Spirit of Eden instead - it's a more deliberately beautiful record so it makes it easier to get a handle of what Talk Talk are doing that is good.

Yes you did. This has nothing to do with the fact that I regard the Sea and Cake with at most a shrug, of course. *hides from Josh* (More seriously, Tim's advice to Mitch is sound, Jaymc -- and Anthony is right in that the early stuff is equally genius in a different world; heard "It's My Life" out at brunch yesterday and remembered again how great it is. However, there is no album actually called Talk Talk, that's a mistake from MST3K. ;-))

It's sort of weird. If jaymc or mitch had made similar comments about, say Trout Mask Replica or something, I'd be totally sympathetic! I mean, Beefheart rules but I certainly understand if it isn't everyone's cup of tea. That's fine. He's sort of creating this totally oppositional aesthetic; but the fun thing about it is the self-relexivity in 1969, absorbs all these elements of insider culture, outsider culture, basically coming to terms with the different camps and aesthetics and general cultural awareness the 60's had wrought (ok yeah, Zappa too; and the Beatles and basically everyone else - of course - who didnt't make it explicit). Talk Talk, in their own way - more than ANY other group seemed to embody a late 80's trajectory of reflection, becoming, what have you. If you can't get into those two late Talk Talk records .. I mean, what are you asking for in music? What do you want? The fucking Sea and Cake?! That's the worst milquetoast horseshit in the fucking history of humankind!

Oh fuck, I dunno. I shouldn't post to this board late at night. I've had some beers, I should go to bed. I don't know, jaymc. You seem like a nice guy. You're a homeboy from Chicago, which I have to give you points for. But if you like that Sea and Cake garbage over Talk Talk I just have to ask what you're looking for in music? I think you need to try to put these records in context. Nothing sounded like those records in the late 80's. The Talk Talk records are the sound of life lived gently, jaggedly, coagulating into these song forms full of mystery and beauty and humility. Instruments asserting themselves, pulling back, hesitating, shouting; it's the sound of life writ large. Lyrically, Hollis deals with lots of horribly emetic, traditionally "rock" tropes on these records - addiction, spirituality, redemption - but he always renders them in a touching, riveting way. There's very much an improvisational - "happy accident" - quality to the proceedings (sounds simple, right? try it, try to make it sound this good; sorry, the chicago dorks don't come close if they were trying [and many of them, O'Rourke not excluded, most definitely did cite Hollis as a big inspiration]), which was completely Hollis' vision; he says as much on a promotional interview cassette I have that was released circa Laughing Stock. In fact, on it he claims his big inspirations were Can's Tago Mago, Coltrane's Live at Birdland (he actually describes loving the sound of some technician setting up / adjusting Elvin Jones' drum kit on the record; that "accident" aesthetic), and something else well fuck it i'm drunk and i'm not gonna listen to it reight now.

In Hollis, you've got this guy starting as a great craftsman of pop melodies mutating into this sort of studio hermit, perfecting his craft, making two fucking absolutely arresting albums, then moving on to a life in the monastery. And never looking back. Oh shit, wait he made the solo album which is just as great!! it's a great story, sort of like Van Vliet, maybe better. Ultimately, forget about my mythologizing - listen to these records, give them some time; it's all right there you give it some time, if you listen intently to the sound of human beings working together.

Nick wrote the be-all and end-all study of Spirit here which is so dense I haven't even read the whole thing.

I actually blushed when I clicked on anthony's link and it lead to my piece! I thought he must mean someone else.

if 'spirit of eden' is a more 'tightly composed' or 'conventionally structured' record then i definitely DON'T want that: 'laughing stock' is interesting to me at its *most* protracted moments, hovering between event and non-event. I can kind of objectively see how hollis' voice works within those tensions - guiding, sculpting, directing, whatever.. but where you hear pure gospel soul or whatever i hear something that's stopping me from listening to the songs as the 'sound happenings' that i want them to be. so yeah, i was being flippant, there ARE things that jaymc is missing, it's just that the noises coming out of mark hollis' throat are making it harder for me to appreciate them. but maybe that's just me, and maybe that's just me NOW, i'm on a bit of an ambient and electoacoustic kick at the moment.

Talk Talk
"Talk Talk (version 1)"
Talk Talk

at the end.

I don't think it is either of those things; it's more on that intensely perfect organic development vibe a la Vocalcity, with lots of gorgeous ebb and flow, whereas Laughing Stock always struck me as a bit more self-consciously live-jam affair (and consequently a bit patchy? It's controversial to say this around here but what is the point of that first song, exactly?). Laughing Stock is actually the more songful of the two albums; the first three songs on Spirit Of Eden form a quasi-proggish suite whose entire point maybe is to blur the lines between event and non-event - long sections of drift building up to and melting away from moments of intense melodic and emotional focus.

What's relevant here though is that the music on Spirit of Eden is so unambiguously *stunning* (eg. the choirs on "I Believe in You" make me want to swoon like Ned Ned) that I think it's easier to ignore Hollis's vocals - which I also found jarring to begin with - until you've internalised them and don't notice anything odd about them anymore. Even though I can definitely see why it's a lot of people's no. 1 pick, I think Laughing Stock is a record of more ambiguous qualities, and perhaps can only be appreciated fully from within the mindstate of being a Hollis fan.

Of course, if you end up *really* not being able to stand Hollis's vocals *at all* then I recommend going straight to Bark Psychosis' Hex instead.

I will say this about the power of the press -- if it wasn't for this review by Jim Arundel and this interview by Steve Sutherland -- both in Melody Maker, late 1991 -- I wouldn't have take a chance on Laughing Stock used when I found it a couple of months later. And my life would have been the poorer, frankly.

what I mean by 'obvious' is partly that the choices made on the record feel like such a perfect fit for a certain audience - one that, given its tastes and the general sort of tenor of records like this, is prone to finding it an acceptable way of achieving that tenor.

I also mean that it just seems like lots more people could easily make records kind of like it. that's probably contentious. especially since I don't even think there are lots of records like it. or maybe that's wrong, and there are (see mitch above regarding kranky, etc., or hello jazz and folk and electronic music, and hello post-rock) lots of them - but the territories they're working in are slightly different, and the choices they make are slightly different. if that makes the records sound even slightly different, those differences can be huge, from the inside.

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.

I have no idea what hollis is singing about on 'laughing stock'. and I often start losing interest near the end. I don't know what this means.

more and more i'm thinking colour of spring was their masterpiece, at least in terms of joining the "oceanic" and "80s stadium pop" aspects of their careers.

i suppose what i mean is that i'm afraid i'm officially getting more from the associated memories (and feelings) of laughing stock and my history with it than the actual document itself, and that's a slippery place to be.

I'm mindful of Josh's criticisms - the distinction b/w Talk Talk and a lot of post-rock and other stuff often seems largely contextual eg. here was a former pop band doing this in the eighties in england. Not that I don't think context is important and relevant but these distinctions can harden into unthinking orthodoxy where Talk Talk are obviously better than [insert post-rock band X here] but we don't really say why.

Again one of the reasons I maybe prefer Spirit of Eden is the fact that in retrospect it still sounds more startling and out-of-leftfield (likewise Colour of Spring, maybe?). Whether it's a tribute to its influence or a sign of something else, Laughing Stock is much more representative of generalist post-rock inclinations in the same way that Music Has The Right... is representative of post-intelligent IDM. This is not necessarily a bad thing, obv.

Possibly the existence of Bark Psychosis is k-necessary to Talk Talk's reputation. BP getting TT "right" (cf. [post rock band X] getting TT "wrong") is convenient mental shorthand for what is "right" about Talk Talk. Also it nicely links them into Lost Generation continuum by which they have ultra-stretched relationship to A. R. Kane et. al. --> they are not in the Sting Continuum.

i do find mark hollis' voice to be heartbreakingly beautiful, but then again i feel the same about green's voice on cupid & psyche in places, so whadda i know

Hasn't Graham Sutton explicitly said that Talk Talk were, like, his biggest formative experience? And the fact he's now working with Lee Harris must count for something too.

"like the bass in bark psychosis gives it a much more kraut/p-punk edge/ballast, and the guitars sound more like mogwai's ascension riffing (yes yes in the sense that the gang of four sounds like the rapture) than tt's brittle scrapings and plinking chimes, and it's all so much denser than the aerated (or arid?) sound of laughing stock and spirit"

Maybe this is part of the way in which BP reposition TT though - retro-wiring TT as post-post-punk. (speaking of Mogwai - has ever a band's quality been so explictly tied to how closely they reflect their predecessors???).

of the many things that can be said about t.t. here's one: i feel eslly affectionate toward the daring silence at the beginning of "spirit of eden" ... not literal silence but an extremely slow crescendo. also the endings of their last three albums are similarly understated.

i have to say that i came to t.t. like many people--in the late 90s, after they had been namedropped by j o'rourke et al, and retroactively dubbed the godfathers of postrock and whathaveyou. so i can't say in honesty that a certain narrative hasn't always been in the background while i've listened to them. but just the same all these observaions about their innovations and so on are sort of academic to me; i find their music beautiful, arresting, etc. beyond any considerations of context. that goes for the mark hollis album as well, though it's deliberately a less visceral experience.

x-post. jess i like your comments on hollis's voice. i like how he seems totally comfortable slipping into a pocket in the arrangement and then shifting back to the fore, but not shifting according to the changes....

I recall that alan and mimi of low, at least (don't know about zak), have said how much they prized these albums. I seem to remember andrew kenny from the american analog set saying something similar to me, in terms of albums that were of central importance for him ('another green world' was another, interestingly). I've probably often implicitly thought of a different kind of secret history involving the 'slowcore' and related bands of the 90s taking advantage of quiet and beauty in related ways to talk talk. that these qualities have so many other antecedent proponents within rock-oriented and -derived music and without probably made it easier for me to see those particular musical choices as not THAT striking (though certainly still marginal in some ways).

nick's piece is a case in point: i often suspect that when people invoke "god" in relation to music (not talking here about explicitly religious music) it's just a way of trying to transcend the superlatives that have become worn down through overuse. "god" is like the ultimate superlative in this case. but as always i think that rather than upping the ante on superlatives we should try to convey distinct impressions of the music itself. any narrative should probably be built up from that.

SoE
CoS
Hex
LS
MH

In that order. Which is, with the exception of MH being last (should be third, between CoS and Hex), the order I heard them in. And I've only come across all of them in the last 18 months.

Jess is remarkably OTM with his observations about Hollis' voice. I love how contrived/controlled/mannered Hollis sounds, how he refuses to follow normal patterns of vocalisation in his delivery, and how he subsumes his own presence within the music. It's definitely an acquired taste though - Emma can't stand listening to TT because of the vocals although she likes the music, whereas half the time I don't even notice they're there, as if the acquisition of the appreciation of Hollis' vocals only comes to exist when you can lose sight of them in the greater picture, and that comes through familiarity.

NB. Still waiting on Independancy...

NB2. Strange thing; I don't actually like the Talk Talk piece I did for Stylus all that much (either of them; there's another composed entirely of adjectives). I think it's far too mannered and prissy, and verges on being up its own ass at times (up my ass?- yes). Much as, yes, SoE (and LS) make me want to believe in God when I don't (can't - and believe me I've tried, faith and divinity and religion has been something I've been obsessed with for years), the pure fact is that I really fuckin' enjoy listening to SoE (more than the others listed of its type) for the visceral thrill of it (especially at volume!), the drums, the bass, the movement of the dynamics, I love the way it twists my guts and shakes my shoulders, and as such it does that better than LS, which, while incredibly beautiful, never reaches the level of fluid, physical POWER that SoE does. When I'm listening to LS I often feel as if I'm just waiting for those opening bars of New Grass as, like mr Arundel said, I'd wait for the dawn after a really frantic sleepless night (for whatever reason) which is not always pleasurable but becomes worthwhile in that one moment of sublime birth (and really, man, it is like the sun coming up, so, so much, after a storm, and not even a spectacular that you can observe from the picture-window, a dull, headache storm that crushes pressure onto your head...)...

Interesting how few women have contributed to this thread; apart from Mel it's very much been 'the sensitive boys club'. Apart from Jess, obv. Who ist not sensyteev!

Sorry!

Anyway, keep talking, this is interesting...

that is much better than the studio version I've heard.

I like spirit of eden (all the reasons for that are here) but just want to say that Hollis voice is meant to be listened to as part of a texture like james says. The lyric sheet in my copy has hollis' writing, which is a scribble, and that makes sense when you listen to the vocals.

I have been known to play Laughing Stock at nuclear volumes, the recording comes to life when the instruments are as loud as they were in the studio.

While we're on the subject, a podcast called Hold Onto The Colours has episodes from this year that feature (separately) Phill Brown, Tim Friese-Greene and Ben Wardle.

Thanks for the Phill Brown interview recommendation. Brilliant interview. I really must read the book.

i bought this today purely because of the Tim Friese-Greene production credit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9YiYDG71xw

favourite comment:

sixthtimelucky - 7 years ago
Dreadful then... dreadful now haha :)

Derek Ritchie - 5 years ago
I agree, and I was the drummer!

30p and i still feel like i was robbed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYQzJ6ezdLs

I mean, it's very much the season anyway, but having seen the 'What's in my bag?' with Meshell Ndegeocello on another thread, where she selects the Hollis solo album today was the day. Shit is sacred music.