Laughing Stock

When Talk Talk appeared a decade ago they were pasted with make-up and wrote twee, catchy synth-pop. They have mutated gradually. Now they are hermetic artists whose songs are barely songs at all, just long funeral-paced affairs in which instruments fade in and out of the mix. It’s a pleasant noise, but annoyingly passive, like waiting for a phone that never rings.

There are lyrics but Mark Hollis’s voice is so at sea amid the wash of sound that it’s hard to make out what he’s saying. One is torn between applauding all this as a sonic experiment and suggesting the band rename itself Mumble Mumble.

Review by Chris Heath

Mark Hollis

As the voice and chief songwriting talent behind the now defunct Talk Talk, Mark Hollis had already begun to move towards a more minimalistic approach. But on this album it sounds as though he has stripped down the music to its bones, and the result is captivating.

Stylistically, it’s a magpie’s nest: gentle jazz rhythms, bluesy harmonica, muted Miles Davis-esque trumpet, hesitant piano motifs, avant-garde English classical woodwind – and lots of silence. Meanwhile Hollis’s voice, which wailed so passionately on songs such as Life’s What You Make It, is mostly reduced to ruminative whispers and aching yelps. On ‘The Daily Planet’, all the elements hitherto hinted at burst forth and coalesce into something beautiful, although it’s still so understated you’d have trouble hearing it on the car stereo. Definitely one for the headphones.

Review by David Cheal