Talk Talk - The Band That Lived Twice

Talk Talk were the protagonists of one of the most unpredictable and wonderful musical metamorphoses that the history of pop and rock has ever known. Few artists, or bands, have moved so radically from complete adherence to the musical trends of the time, in the early part of their career, to complete independence from them, a shift that occurred gradually in the second phase of their artistic life.

After the Flood

Mark Hollis was always the band's guiding force - singer, songwriter and founder. He took his first steps in his native Tottenham, in London, backed by his older brother Ed, who was already plugged into the music scene of the time. Under the name "The Reaction", back in 1979, the two even managed to get one of their tracks onto a compilation released by the then up-and-coming Beggars Banquet. Hollis, however, had other ambitions, and began shaping what would become the Talk Talk project. His efforts were rewarded when Island offered him the chance to record some demos, and once his brother Ed recruited Paul Webb on bass and Lee Harris on drums, the lineup was complete. But it was EMI who truly believed in them, signing them to a proper contract and giving them the chance to record an album - produced, no less, by Colin Thurston, who had just hit the jackpot with Duran Duran's debut.

It's 1982, and both the debut album The Party's Over and the singles taken from it, "Talk Talk" and the more incisive "Today" (which reached No. 14 on the charts), belong firmly to that pop moment somewhat pompously dubbed "new romantic", a scene in which Simon Le Bon's band stood out as one of the leading lights. Despite the effectiveness of the singles, the album as a whole is mediocre, and Talk Talk blend into the crowd of bands chasing fashionable synthetic sounds and new wave dancefloor rhythms. It soon became clear that this was an ill-fitting suit: Colin Thurston even left the production partway through, and Hollis, Webb and Harris set out on their own to find a more satisfying artistic direction. The encounter with Tim Friese-Greene would prove decisive - though never officially part of the band's lineup, from this point on he can be considered the "fourth man". Friese-Greene took up what amounts to a genuine control-room role: producer, keyboardist, and co-writer with Hollis of nearly all the songs.

The effects of this addition came to fruition on the second album, It's My Life, again released by EMI in 1984; the first single was the title track, which quickly became one of the hits of that season (curiously, more so in Italy than in any other country, homeland included), to the point that it's now considered a classic of that era (in 2004, 20 years on, it would be, rather predictably, covered by No Doubt) - a simple song, yet full of details that are anything but ordinary, melancholic and seductive. The next single, "Such A Shame", while still firmly within pop territory, is a musically more complex and accomplished track, and matched the success of the first. Two memorable videos also helped, giving Hollis the chance to unleash his sarcastic, cheeky facial expressions. The album is uneven, with a few still-bland tracks (especially in the second half), but shows greater care in the arrangements, particularly in the richer use of keyboards, and a wider expressive range. The rhythm section grows too: Webb's bass seems more prominent, capable of standing out with inventive, melodic lines, at times recalling the celebrated Mick Karn ("Such A Shame" is the shining example of this). Besides the two singles, "Dum Dum Girl" stands out, and above all "Tomorrow Started", tracks that confirm the overall melancholic, reflective tone of the album. Still, something is missing.

The Chameleon

Two years pass, and Talk Talk release The Colour Of Spring, an emblematic title: it is in spring, after all, that the new forms of nature unfold. Confirming the significance of the title is the splendid cover, once again the work of James Marsh, who had been with the band since the start and would stay with them until their final release. This is, in fact, a textbook transitional album: Talk Talk show they have completely shaken off the clichés of a musical era now drawing to a close, and that they can set out on their own path. Of course, not everything is perfect yet, the break is not total, but where it is evident, it shines with all its potential. It's striking how many musicians contribute to the recording of the album; the most famous names are Steve Winwood on organ and David Rhodes on guitar, who are not merely feathers in the band's cap, but lend the songs greater openness and warmth, while also suggesting that Talk Talk are in some way looking back to the art-rock of the previous decade.

The percussive, dark and insistent "Life's What You Make It" is the lead single (which sees them performing even on the stage of Sanremo). The songs that mark the biggest departure from the recent past, however, are others: the opener "Happiness Is Easy", initially disguised as docile, blues-tinged pop-rock, unexpectedly morphs into a suspended, free-form song, thanks to a sumptuous use of strings and an unforeseen children's choir duetting with Hollis at the end of the chorus.

Then there's "I Don't Believe In You", a melancholy, dreamlike ballad, and two tracks where the influence of free jazz forms becomes more clearly apparent, "April 5th" and "Chameleon Day". The latter is a track as brief as it is magical. Built almost entirely around Hollis's voice and piano, it amounts to little more than two minutes of rarefied, fragile music, but that moment, at 2:18, where Hollis anticipates the track's final line with the barest thread of voice — that is the moment a window opens onto the band's imminent future, where all of Hollis's unique, irreducible sensitivity comes pouring out, marking him as a singular interpreter. His voice always conveys a conscious suffering, at times desperate but never devoid of will. And by now his Talk Talk are a band capable not only of standing on their own, but of operating on a different plane altogether, higher up.

Once again, two years later, when Spirit Of Eden comes out, everything is immediately clear: the album has a sort of introduction, made up of hinted-at sounds, drones, a thread of strings in the background, a few piano notes probing at a melody. It's like looking down on a city slowly waking up, detached, from a vantage point outside that world, from above. It's the metaphor for Talk Talk's definitive abandonment of any ties to the musical trends of the time, their detachment from any contingent situation. It's a new beginning.

Eden and Desire

Talk Talk's music finally establishes itself as spiritual music. And if the spirit speaks, in some way, of the Soul, the music that spoke best of it in the last century is the blues. Indeed, it's a scorching slide guitar that cuts through the initial rarefaction, backed up a few bars later by a raw harmonica; a weary cadence, a handful of chords, Hollis's voice seeming to tear itself from the mouth it comes out of. A kind of faint refrain seems to emerge from nowhere, a vapor that sublimates into a few measured piano chords awaiting the bursts of light fired off by the organ, until the opening verse returns. This is "The Rainbow", the wonderful opening of this three-part suite that continues with "Eden" and "Desire", alternating dark, tense catalepsy with bloody, nervy explosions. Hollis and company build their music on simple, often repeated patterns (like the guitar on "Desire", for instance), yet always retaining the peculiar ability to smear their rough-hewn soundscape in a different, unpredictable way each time, producing music that feels at once sparse and meticulously rich in detail. It's a trance that, rather than psychedelic — in the sense of opening onto other perceptions of the mind — feels more like a violent fever, exhausting but born of a continuous tension, with its predictable peaks and equally predictable emotional dips. The songs sound as if played in slow motion (a few years later someone would call something similar slow-core), as if to demand closer listening, to give greater weight to the notes actually played: Hollis's motto, after all, was "Before you play two notes learn how to play one note – and don't play one note unless you've got a reason to play it". In this way Talk Talk also set themselves apart from the ethereal movement spawned by the Cocteau Twins; theirs is an introspective spirituality that could be called Augustinian, where the thought is turned toward the heavens, but the gaze remains firmly on the earth. It is bleeding music. From a more formal standpoint, especially given the frequent free use of horns, it can recall certain moments of the Canterbury scene, early Matching Mole for instance, thanks to the sense of expressive freedom and the warmth radiating from every note. The synths vanish, guitars, piano and organ triumph, and even the rhythm section embraces this new direction, moving toward a style closer to jazz.

It seems incredible that this could be the same band from the early days. Not even the introverted looks, Hollis's mocking facial expressions, or the occasional refinement in the arrangements of those chart-friendly songs could have hinted that such a treasure lay behind it all.

The rest of the album is made up of shorter tracks, but of unchanged depth: "Inheritance" drifts in a trance-like state between blues and free jazz, "I Believe In You" is a masterpiece of dreamlike, mystical, cathartic suspension, with a gospel choir and an organ that seem to redeem and bring strength and light (in the video, built entirely on half-light and superimpositions, this happens quite literally). The closing "Wealth" matches "Rainbow" for sheer rarefaction, dissolving into a truly celestial flow of organ and keyboards, the end of a process of atonement and salvation that Hollis has made us fully part of, with brief, carefully considered lyrics, expressed in the same spirit as the music: a few meditated phrases, moving through desolation and desire, awareness and hope.

This time it takes a year longer than usual for a new album, and there's a change of record label. Released by Polydor in 1991, Laughing Stock is, without question, on a par with its predecessor's greatness, a natural continuation of it. The only thing missing is the element of novelty; otherwise, trying to rank or weigh the importance of one against the other is a pointless exercise that risks becoming splitting hairs. What matters is that the songs on Laughing Stock retain the fragile, tense, intimate mood of the previous album, while pushing even further away from any tie to the traditional song form. Rather than a change, it would be more accurate to speak of a transposition of a method, an approach, redirected toward a slightly different form, with many shared elements, instrumentation and sound chief among them. Where on Spirit Of Eden the stretching of familiar musical practices altered their perception to the point of making them unrecognizable, or at least stripping them of their common meaning, on Laughing Stock tracks like "After The Flood", "New Grass" and "Ascension Day" proceed instead through layering that is as light as it is substantial, with circular musical phrases shifting so fluidly that every mutation feels necessary and natural. If the previous album may have paved the way for what came to be known as slow-core, this one foreshadows certain forms of post-rock, music that can't be pinned down by the categories used so far, yet at the same time isn't so far removed from them as to sound alien to our ears.

After the Flood

This is the final chapter of the Talk Talk saga, the last stage of their remarkable evolutionary process. One could ask more of them out of sheer selfishness, but it would be unfair, and perhaps it's simply impossible to imagine another album able to compete with the others — not so much in terms of beauty, but because it's hard to imagine a leap into something else of the same magnitude. Various compilations would fill the gap in the meantime, chief among them Asides Besides (EMI, 1998), a double CD containing singles, B-sides, and numerous alternate mixes of the original versions — interesting not just for fans, thanks also to "John Cope" and the B-side of the single "Life's What You Make It", "It's Getting Late In The Evening", a gorgeous, shimmering preview of what was to come. In 1999 (on the Blueprint label) a live album recorded in 1986, after the release of The Colour Of Spring, was released, and it's well worth hearing. Then came the 2001 compilation Missing Pieces (distributed in Italy by Materiali Sonori), containing two unreleased tracks from the Laughing Stock period and some alternate versions of "After The Flood", "Myrrhman", "Ascension Day", "5:09" and "New Grass".

Fortunately, at least Mark Hollis would not leave us entirely empty-handed, releasing in 1998 a very fine self-titled solo album, even more rarefied than the work made with the band, yet one in which it's easy to recognize shared qualities. Not a step backward, but a heightening of certain aspects: the suffering, the attentiveness that seems to transfigure a kind of modesty about feeling. His voice, ever more fragile — where fragility also means the courage and strength to declare itself — remains as communicative as few others, accompanying songs where everything is measured out in small, yet indispensable doses. And a track like "A Life (1895-1915)" alone would justify an entire career, for the miraculous way it opens and closes in the same manner, like a thread that unwinds and reties itself, leaving us astonished.

Shortly afterward, Hollis would announce his retirement from the world of music (though he can still be found in the credits of Anja Garbarek's first solo album), quietly, fittingly so. Webb and Harris would go on to produce a project called O' Rang, under which they released two albums. The first, Herd Of Instinct (1995), is an intriguing fusion of psychedelia, rock and music with strong Middle Eastern influences. It was on this occasion that they met Beth Gibbons (not yet established as the definitive voice of trip-hop), whose fine solo album, "Out Of Season", Webb would produce and record with her under the pseudonym Rustin' Man — his first and, so far, only one (Harris would join them on stage).

Webb himself has also released a solo album, Stone Boat (2005).

Lee Harris would go on to play on the comeback album by Bark Psychosis, the project of Graham Sutton, who had been Talk Talk's biggest protégé, Codename Dustsucker (2004).

The man behind the scenes, Tim Friese-Greene, instead launches the Heligoland project, founding his own label, Calcium Chloride, for the occasion. The first attempt is the EP Creosote & Tar (1997), but the Velvet-esque noise-boogie of the title track and of "Dreaming Of Persephone", the claustrophobic blues of "Blued" and the psychedelic ballad "Kiss-Off" only confirm how much Hollis is missed.

The debut album Heligoland (2000) is a more rigorous work that sharpens its mission by blending psychedelic elements. The guitar still remains at the centre, winding and flaring up through the jagged, pulsing rhythms of "Lost And Lethal" and the more devotional "Bluebird", and "Isn't It Sad" (interrupted by blasts of chamber horns). The swings of "Shock Treatment" (spiritual hard rock meeting rarefied psalmody) sketch a disorienting dichotomy that, finally, almost brings him back to his Talk Talk days, while his chamber-avant-garde leanings are confined to the brief "Relapse".

It takes another hermit-like pause before we hear the follow-up, Pitcher, Flask & Foxy Movie (2006). Influenced by the electronic turn of Radiohead, Friese-Greene points his compass toward a glacial, polished sound. Yet what stands out is still his composed sense of balance. Even in convoluted techno boleros ("Wedding Feast"), fractured ballads ("Clasp"), or driving marches ("Down To Zero"), a measured gait and a more traditional folk-rock structure prevail. "Semantics Got Me Caned" and "Black Girl", on the other hand, derail him toward the singer-songwriter discovering the electric guitar (the '65 Dylan). As with its predecessor, only a few tracks bear witness to the impressionist-painter talent that made his mother band's glory, "Fruit" and "The War Stupid" (the 7 minutes of "She Walked" are a faded copy of a pop ballad).

The mini-album One Girl Among Many (2015), on the other hand, dives into dancefloor electronica.

Friese-Greene has also recorded under his own name the 10 Sketches For Piano Trio (2009), the definitive outlet for the jazz ambitions of an entire career. The traditional folk of the single "I Would Change None For You" (2015) is paired with the hazy chillout of "All I Hear Is Foley" (already released in 2011). Melodic Apoptosis (2022), recorded — during lockdown — for vibraphone, percussion and melodica, retreats definitively from post-rock into an amateurish take on Art Of Noise.

More than twenty years after the band's split, Spirit Of Talk Talk (2012) is a double collective tribute to their career.

Dreadful news in February 2019 left fans chilled and dashed forever any hope of hearing new music from Talk Talk: Mark Hollis passed away at the age of 64, bringing down the curtain for good on one of the most fascinating arcs in contemporary music, with the discretion and elegance that were always his own.

It didn't seem that way at the time, but Talk Talk's legacy has grown ever more evident over the years, and their work has gradually come to be reassessed as visionary. Before anyone was even talking about slow-core or post-rock, Talk Talk were already playing it. The champions of those genres, who left such a decisive mark on the following decade, came out of hardcore, or were trying to reclaim Seventies avant-rock, itself rediscovered thanks to CD reissues of those forgotten forerunners. Talk Talk, instead, came from the most derided genre of the Eighties, synth-pop, and beat everyone to it. Funny how life works, isn't it?

Contributions by Ossydiana Speri (on Mark Hollis's death)

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