Natural History

This is a chronological history of a band waving goodbye to a label who evidently couldn't cope with their very peculiar development. The opening track, Today (their biggest single, peaking at 14 in 1982), finds them in post-disco mode with moving spirit Mark Hollis sounding rather like contemporaries Marc Almond or Midge Ure. Then, Talk Talk were readily mistaken for new romantics, but the key to their transformation was the alliance Hollis forged with producer/co-writer Tim Friese-Green when recording It's My Life ('84). It took them some time to realise what they were after, but they got there with their fourth album, Spirit Of Eden ('88), a stunning experience in six songs. Dead slow and soaked in melancholy emotions, it was so organically built that the two tracks extracted here, I Believe In You and Desire, seem odd, strangers in the strange land of the band's past -aesthetically brilliant, but disregarding market forces altogether.

Accurately reflecting Talk Talk's career graph, Natural History is necessarily a very patchy piece of entertainment. But their next, on Phonogram, should more than justify the transfer fee. ***

Review by Phil Sutcliffe

History Revisited

A classic case of making hay after the record deal is terminated, this collection of Talk Talk remixes comes without any participation-or approval-from the band, already working on their first release for their new employers Polydor. Nothing more than a jazzed-up version of last year's highly successful Natural History, this is another interesting example of how anyone with a good tune under their belts can be made instantly danceable with the application of the correct knobs at the appropriate moments. The previously pedestrian Life's What You Make It, for example, is transformed into a right old groove, while the dub remix of Happiness Is Easy takes the best of the original version, strips them right down and becomes quite mesmeric in the process. Elsewhere, Dum Dum Girl undergoes a Spice Remix. Living In Another World gets a double dose via the '91 Mix and the Curious World Dub Mix, while It's My Life is transformed into a potential club hit thanks to the oddly-titled Tropical Rainforest Mix. An undeniable example of profit maximisation in its most naked form but-hey!-it all sounds just great in the car. ****

Review by Barry Mcllheney

Spirit Of Eden

Talk Talk were a pop group until their leader, Mark Hollis, realised that he wanted to be somewhere else entirely. And this was the place. Opaque of word, wholly melancholic in tone, Spirit Of Eden is dead-slow ruminations for tremulous voice and stately piano are variously adorned with the oft neglected sounds of harmonica, violin, muted trumpet, oboe and clarinet in a moving display of creative patience and forbearance from temptation to make a bigger splash. Yet despite the fact that all six of the albumís long tracks are practically perfect, Hollis and Talk Talk have barely surfaced since. ***

Laughing Stock

One year after the million-selling compilation Natural History: Very Best Of Talk Talk and two years after the distinctly uncommercial Spirit of Eden, comes Talk Talk's new offering. That the group should choose to follow the experimental free-form moodiness of the latter rather than the seductively melodic compositions of the former will no doubt cause their new label a few heart-searching moments but, though Laughing Stock is even more withdrawn and personal than before, it does not disappoint.

Laughing Stock is clearly a descendant of Spirit Of Eden. Like its predecessor, it contains just six lengthy tracks and continues Mark Hollis's partnership with producer-contributor Tim Friese-Greene.

Musically too, Laughing Stock sounds as if it might have been culled from hours of improvisation, belonging to some spiritual whole. Two tracks share the same upbeat jazzy drum figure repeated throughout (the splashily percussive kind so often used as a rhythmic base for instrumental exploration), there are no gaps between tracks-indeed two overlap-while two more share an opening guitar pattern.

There are no songs in the pop song-and-verse sense, rather an instrumental ebb and flow through a sparse musical soundscape. It's quiet but intense, using the familiar Talk Talk sounds of ringing guitar, acoustic double bass, near-motionless Claude Debussy-like piano and swelling Hammond organ (supplemented on occasion by the equally subdued sounds of harmonium, clarinet, sax and mouth organ) drifting in and out of a loosely melodic structure with its own internal dynamics. Here too are the more abrasive sparks of free-form guitar and, more than once, the emotive mouth organ and simple bluesy guitar evoking the spirit of a doomed Robert Johnson facing the hellhound on his tail.

It is into this heavily suggestive atmospheric backdrop that Mark Hollis drops his periodic vocal appearances. Lyrically, he remains as elusive as ever. Some of his skeletal, cryptic lyrics are like a verbal equivalent of 'Twin Peaks' where the images are precise enough but their meaning has to be divined. This time, however, there's a strongly mystical, almost religious theme running through titles like Ascension Day and After The Flood. The ideas of sin, dying and regeneration recur in almost every song, with images such as love and damnation, sacraments and blood casting a heavily fatalistic shadow over the glimpses of tunes, a mood of resignation reinforced by Mark Hollis's mournful delivery or tremulous near-whisper.

Jolly party music it isn't but Laughing Stock has its own brooding appeal which grows with every play. The melancholy mood, a rare thoughtfulness and the sense of sharing something deeply personal, together with the haunting, emotional quality of the understated music, put Talk Talk heavily at odds with the commercial charts where instant success is everything. Yet precisely the same qualities will ensure that even though Laughing Stock may lose Mark Hollis some of his newly found friends, it will be valued long after such superficial quick thrills are forgotten. ****

Review by Ian Cranna

London 86

Mark Hollis's earnest Essex collective recorded at Hammersmith Odeon in 1986. Cajoled into adopting a New Romantic image by EMI, Talk Talk took two albums to ditch the electropop stance and its accompanying frills. Touring to promote their third release, The Colour Of Spring, and with their three-piece line-up bolstered by five extra musicians, Hammersmith features weighty, expansive takes on, among others, Living In Another World and the UK Number 16 hit Life's What You Make It. While shunning anything from 1982's synth-driven The Party's Over debut, the sparseness of 1988's Spirit Of Eden is still some way off. Here, the morose, stabbing piano and Mark Hollis's mumbled melancholia plot a nervy course through the surprisingly fleshy backing. Emotive, if occasionally overwrought, it's hard to believe they were once meant to be the new Duran Duran. ***

Review by Mark Blake

Best albums of 1988: Spirit Of Eden

Pale and interesting pop group become major artists in an overnight that took two years of agonising. Opaque words and slow-to-inert rhythms prove positives in an overwhelmingly intense exploration of melancholy emotions through sound. Introverted leader Mark Hollis sings so hard it hurts. Producer/co-writer Tim Friese-Greene shares the credit, not least for inspiring a realm of session specialists to play with touching empathy and reviving the infinite possibilities of natural horns, strings, and woodwind outside the classical racks. A record of beauty.

The Very Best Of Talk Talk

In which the tale is told of how shiny pop also-rans from the early 80s ended up recording some of the loveliest sounds of that or any other decade. It’s a story apt to confuse. People familiar with early Talk Talk might be surprised by their later work. What connects, say, 1982’s single, ‘Talk Talk’ and ‘I Believe in You’, a track from 1988’s Spirit of Eden album? Apart from the distinctive, mournful voice of chief songwriter Mark Hollis, the immediate answer appears to be, not a lot. The first is snappy, effervescent pop; the second is not really a song in the verse-chorus-verse sense. If the term had not been abused, you might even call it ‘mood music,’ instruments providing ‘colour’ as much as musical structure. It’s a good tale, then: one of a band learning on the job, finding new styles even though the old one was fine and bankable enough.

Hollis formed the band in 1981 with drummer Lee Harris and bassist Paul Webb. Hit singles, ‘Talk Talk’ and ‘Today’ – both included here – quickly followed. At the time, they dealt in a superior version of electro dance, bolstered by a smart grasp of melody. It worked well, though Hollis’s voice suggested he was suffering from something. Or maybe he was just pondering the next move. 1984’s It’s My Life followed in a similar vein, but 1986’s The Colour of Spring hinted that there might be life beyond the short pop song. Hence, Spirit of Eden, released two years later – less a collection than a suite of sounds. It could have given the concept album a bad name, as it searched, don’t you know, for a new Eden. It might sound terribly precious, but it never labours under the vagueness chancers pass off as ‘ambient’. Hollis, writing with producer Tim Friese Greene worked from a clearly-thought structure, and great, heavy bass lines and blues guitar featured alongside the more delicate sounds.

That’s the story. This album, though, doesn’t tell it too well. Tracks from Spirit of Eden appear in short form, which spoils the fun. Not the only problem. Not everyone approved of Talk Talk’s musical shift, including the public, it appears. Their last album, 1991’a Laughing Stock, somehow ended up on jazz label Verve, and doesn’t feature on this compilation. Still, while The Very Best Of carries a cheeky name, it’s not a bad overview. At least it documents the musical distance traveled. Further movement is on hold. Hollis has been quiet for a while but is, apparently, working on new material. It will be good news if he finds an outlet. ***

Review by Robert Yates

The Colour Of Spring (1997 vinly re-release)

This vinyl re-issue of Talk Talk’s third album is part of EMI’s centennial celebration re-release of ‘classic’ LPs on vinyl. As it happens, sitting between the post-new romantic pop of 1982’s The Party’s Over and 1984’s It’s My Life, and the studiously esoteric, minutely crafted offerings that were 1988’s Spirit of Eden and 1991’s Laughing Stock, this 1986 album is perfect vinyl-junkie fodder. Songs as sweetly sophisticated as ‘Happiness is Easy’ and ‘Give It Up’ are never going to sound good confronted with pre-CD problems such as dust and static, but the rolling groove and echoing guitar of ‘Life’s What You Make It’ and the bluesy, hammond-heavy ‘Living In Another World’ could never sound as deeply warm in any other format.