Talk Talk frontman Mark Hollis passed away this week at the age of 64. And I think what has struck me in the last few days is how much he's been mourned by music lovers of different generations, even though the band hasn't been active in decades and he only made one solo record over 20 years ago. I remember being surprised in the late '90s when I first started picking up the buzz of the cult following around the less commercial later albums of an '80s synth pop band, and it wasn't until much later that I started to really look into it for myself. A few years ago I was compiling my top 50 albums of 1991, and decided to check out Laughing Stock to see what all the hype was about, and was so blown away that I put it at #4, ahead of Nevermind. But I hadn't listened to all of Talk Talk's albums, so this week's sad news was a good excuse to put them on and appreciate the band's small but deeply varied catalog.

Talk Talk deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. The Party's Over
2. Another Word
3. It's So Serious
4. The Last Time
5. Call In The Night Boys
6. Does Caroline Know
7. Happiness Is Easy
8. Chameleon Day
9. The Rainbow
10. Eden
11. Desire
12. New Grass
13. Ascension Day
14. Runeii

Tracks 1, 2 and 3 from The Party's Over (1982)
Tracks 4, 5 and 6 from It's My Life (1984)
Tracks 7 and 8 from The Colour Of Spring (1986)
Tracks 9, 10 and 11 from Spirit Of Eden (1988)
Tracks 12, 13 and 14 from Laughing Stock (1991)

It's a little strange to view this discography through the lens of 'deep cuts,' since Talk Talk made 3 albums as a successful singles act and then 2 uncompromising, cohesive albums of artsong that all but abandoned the idea of radio singles. But putting this stuff in chronological order gives a certain logic to their restless creative journey, how willing they were to abandon what made them famous in favor of something that would take years to build a passionate word-of-mouth following. I don't think what Radiohead did is quite the same thing, but it's certainly easy to see the parallels and wonder if Talk Talk might have had a more popular experimental period and perhaps a longer career if they'd attempted it a decade later (or even a decade earlier). The late '80s and early '90s were a time when established acts were, for the most part, conforming and/or coasting, not reinventing themselves. A lot of '80s acts, synth pop groups and hair metal bands and old school rappers, released their final album and broke up around that time, but those albums were usually dated crap, not brilliant, singular records like Laughing Stock.

Of course, even at the height of their fame, Talk Talk were much bigger in the UK than they were in America, where "It's My Life" was their only top 40 hit, and No Doubt's 2003 cover was far bigger than the original. And hearing their early albums, I kinda wish they had been as ubiquitous in the U.S. as Duran Duran or the Human League, their singles are easily on par with those groups and the albums have a bit more going on. But I'm kind of glad I'm hearing some of this stuff for the first time now. I grew up on a lot of '80s new wave and synth pop but I think it means more to me now, and this stuff is really hitting me nicely in the context of me listening to Peter Gabriel more than almost any other artist over the past year. Even though the band kind of spoke dismissively of synthesizers even before they largely stopped using them, there's some really brilliant synth tones on the early records, particularly "Call In The Night Boys."

Even with The Colour Of Spring as kind of a connective tissue between early Talk Talk and later Talk Talk, the amount of quiet moments and open spaces in Spirit Of Eden can be weirdly startling. I really love how the whole first 20 minutes of the album feel like they're building up to that big percussion section in "Desire." But Hollis's voice is just such a lovely sound, kind of a classic vulnerable British pop voice, that these records can go pretty far out without becoming abrasive or off-putting, there's always an emotional core there even as all these rich textures of organ and trumpet and harmonica kind of float in and out of frame. I've never cared much for the term 'post-rock,' and it particularly seems insufficient to describe what this British band was doing a few years before the genre peaked in America, but certainly this stuff will leave you grasping for exactly what words do describe it aptly.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28, 2019 at 11:26 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.