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The Gift

“If you asked me about which picture I’d look at while listening to the record, I’d say something along the lines of an image with only two colors, such as purple on black, black on red. It would be something extremely simple to look at, with no narrative content, and yet possess plenty of configurations.[…] At first glance, the immediate picture seems little more than two colors. But the more people work on it, or listen to the music, the more you get back.”  Mark Hollis quoted in Gaffa, February 1998

“Black Angel’s Death Song” was my first introduction to the sound of the Velvet Underground.

“If Epiphany’s terror

reduced you

to shame

have your head

bobbed and weaved,

choose a side to be on.”

I was instantly hooked.

I read somewhere (where? I don’t remember) that Mark Hollis’s introduction to the Velvet Underground was The Gift. Apparently he loved it.

If you haven’t heard it, on first listen you may become enamoured by John Cale’s darkly funny storytelling, and not really notice the music coming from the other speaker, but listen again and you’ll enjoy a hypnotising unchanging beat overlaid with the discordant but not entirely tuneless squeaking and squawking of Lou Reed’s guitar.

The Gift, the track produced for the Mark Hollis album, also boasts a steady hypnotic beat. Acoustic guitars are plucked discordantly but not entirely tunelessly amid  the squeaks and squawks of Mark Feltham’s harmonica.

The Velvet Underground play games with our ears, running vocals and music through separate channels. Mark Hollis plays games with our ears, recording the air in the room, mixing separate performances into something that sounds like four musicians gathered together sketching a tune into a pair of perfectly placed microphones.

“Gone

And now the shade

Sun eclipsed to shame”

Lyrically, Mark Hollis’s The Gift vibes with the darkness of VU’s Black Angel’s Death Song more than the kookiness of The Gift. It is a stretch, I know, to even say these two songs have anything in common beside the title, to insinuate that the latter was in any way inspired by the former. But they both shift your thinking  like a minimalist black and purple painting and the more you work on it, the more you listen, the more you get back.

The Gift – Mark Hollis https://youtu.be/B7H9m0irTh0?si=ZwZdiZaicmSNLglq

 

The Gift – The Velvet Underground https://youtu.be/_Gwth0jfdfc?si=okGHszk_yXTrZr8X

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The Last Time

“Pain is quiet
I’ve laughed at silence
For the last time
Let the show begin
For the last time”

That Mark Hollis, eh? Always banging on about silence. Although this is a lyric from Talk Talk’s second album, years before his (felt like) many pronouncements on the importance of silence. There’s not much room for your ears to rest in this track – it is full to bursting with an absolute multitude of sounds going every which way.

I used to own a tremendous pair of (fairly) vintage headphones that made everything extra space-y; they gave so much definition and separation to the music, it could sometimes be startling. I was certainly startled on a years-ago morning, doing my weekend chores and listening to Its My Life on said headphones when, suddenly, during The Last Time, there was a voice in my ear. Not Hollis singing. Just a single exclamation, a word – is it “woah”? I nearly jumped out of my skin, I thought there was someone standing behind me (in my empty house). Hear it for yourself, it’s at 2 minutes and 43 seconds in. I can’t unhear it, although those headphones are long gone and my more modern ones don’t give the effect of a voice at my shoulder.

People talk about listening to the later Talk Talk albums over and over and hearing new sonic details every time, I say you can do that with all TT albums – at least, once TFG was on board, amusing himself by leaving the mistakes in, using the accidents, happy or otherwise.

I can’t find any evidence of The Last Time being included on a setlist. No-one seems to have had much to say about it. Aside from the YouTube comments section of course. 16 years ago (!) khwrennz commented on the video linked below “quite the intense one, aren’t we” and that pretty much sums it up. The lyrics, that voice, forever surprising in its duality, intense and gentle all in the same breath; a track recorded carefully and soulfully and then left to drift, a bright star in Talk Talk’s brilliant constellation of tunes.

“What can I say? Yes, there is a sad overtone to my voice. But even that often comes with joy. You know that feeling that if you’re happy, you can cry with happiness? ” – Oor September 1984

The Last Time:

https://youtu.be/1IIUZE85ouE?si=g71JC0wF9Wdci75Z

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Myrrhman

“Myrrhman”, the opening song, is a prime example; a few flecks of viola and guitar held in place by the ambience of the room, delicate as a dragonfly wing. There are strokes of piano and double bass and Lee Harris — always an impressively sensitive and imaginative drummer — provides specks of brushed snare and cymbal. Above, no, amongst it lies Mark Hollis’ unique and fragile voice. The sense is obscured, but his yearning tone is supremely articulate, seemingly aching for peace, redemption, and an end to unknowingness.”- Melody Maker reviews Laughing Stock, 1991

“But the reason for putting [Myrrhman] up the front is, if you are looking in classical terms at things, you know, when the thing starts, it doesn’t necessarily have to attack you. What it does is, for the first few minutes, it’s there just to create a mood from which it then develops […] I think that track is the most eclectic track for me.” – Mark Hollis talking about Laughing Stock for 19 minutes, 1991

Myrrhman certainly does create a mood; and more than that, it creates other realities – maybe you are in a small boat floating on the dark ocean of a distant planet with unfamiliar constellations; or maybe you are the invisible observer in an attic room furnished with just a kitchen chair and a noose.

Where have you gone? Come back and listen to this.

Myrrhman insists on the listener’s undivided attention. Like, really – pay attention. This song is quiet, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s ‘background’. It is intense. I adore this piece of music, but it is still NFC: Not For Company. That is, I love it but I wouldn’t put it on my Friday Work Drinks playlist, not even in the ‘chill’ section.

The first track on the last Talk Talk album, it winks knowingly to a past life; as the title of the first Talk Talk single and as the first line of The ReAction’s I Keep On Telling You, a twin with the last line of Myrrhman. First and last. Alpha and Omega. The beginning and the end, the beginning of the end.

 

Myrrhmanhttps://youtu.be/ckNZljhwLfs?si=LP6l2Lim5GhMN0t_

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Happiness Is Easy

“The simplicity of the songs and Mark Hollis’s voice make this album just incredible. The first tune, Happiness Is Easy, says it all – nothing but a bass, a snare and a weird chord. That’s Talk Talk all over, great songs and simplicity with a twist.” – Richard Wright (Pink Floyd) – Spirit of Talk Talk (book)

If Spirit of Eden created the illusion of a bunch of musicians casually jamming together in a room, then perhaps the illusion created by The Colour of Spring – and Happiness is Easy in particular – is of seeming simplicity, born of great complexity.

Listen closely to Happiness is Easy. There’s a lot of space in it, but then again there’s such a lot going on, so many moving parts, so many scraps of sound – random piano notes, the expected churchy organ, a glorious trumpet, a faraway Hollis hollering in witness, sprinkles of percussion; a bass, a snare and a weird chord. The space is the trick, it’s the thing that gives that illusion of simplicity.

And the children’s choir. What could be more simple and beautiful? They don’t sound pious or pompous or ironic, just young school kids singing, mostly in tune and very very English. It’s not a gimmick. It’s not cheesy, although in the wrong hands it could easily be so. It’s perfect for the song.

Which is also not ironic or cheesy. Given the writer’s propensity for sarcasm in his daily life, you could read the song title as sarcastic, but I don’t hear any sarcasm at all in the vocal. Happiness IS easy. It’s as easy as breathing in, breathing out. Just ask Thich Nhat Hanh.

I have said before that Mark Hollis meets my definition of a Buddha (note: not a saint), mostly due to his penchant for pushing musician’s buttons to find their true sound. TCOS is full of Buddhist concepts, as written by a silence-loving vegetarian minimalist. Happiness is Easy in particular. It’s not the only reason I love this song, but it’s one of many.

“I can’t think of any other way of being able to sing a lyric and actually sing it and feel it unless I believe in what I’m singing about […] I’m not saying all lyrics have to be about religion but, in a way, there must be that kind of thing in it.“ – Mark Hollis, Melody Maker, September 1991

Happiness Is Easyhttps://youtu.be/tpGkiZ7FGmg?si=hJc1HcRpp8nBlcOh

Thich Nhat Hanh on happiness https://youtu.be/jAhtNotxqTk?si=ve2J5AEQ8uxQnD8x

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ARB Section 1

“He went back to the music that Hollis and Air had created for Peacock, and discovered that it worked well with the feel of the second season of “Boss”. Like Cillian Murphy’s character, Kelsey Grammer’s Chicago mayor Tom Kane is dealing with a mental disorder that he must keep hidden.

Reitzell said that “ARB Section 1” is only part of the music that Hollis created for Peacock; he hopes to use the rest at some point.”
Jenn Pelly for Pitchfork, August, 2012

The sub-heading for that Pitchfork article is “First new music from the elusive genius in 14 years”. It’s a decent sized write-up for a piece of music that is barely a minute and a half long. By Mark Hollis’s own standard, you can’t boil an egg to it. You can’t boil an egg to New Grass, either. Think about that. But ARB Section 1 isn’t ridiculously brief due to any Hollis contrariness. It’s just that it is a tiny taste of something bigger.

People – well, Hollis fans anyway – LOST THEIR MINDS when this first appeared in the world. Reading old interviews with the fascinating Brian Reitzell is a reminder that fans were missing Mark Hollis long before 2019.

Brian and Mark became friends in the 2000’s, the sort of friends who could talk together for hours about books, movies and (sometimes) music. Sounds magical doesn’t it. Maybe it was, a bit, ‘cause that friendship created a movie score. It never made it to the screen. Not because it wasn’t good enough for the movie. I like to believe it was because it was too good for the movie. I mean, Cillian Murphy fans aside, have you ever seen or even heard of Peacock?

Despite that last sentence from Pitchfork, I doubt ‘the rest of it’ will ever see the light of day (now).

ARB Section 1 is a sliver of music written to be both heard and watched. I haven’t seen it, only heard it – it’s hard to judge from half of the intended experience.

I have however read that ARB Section 1 was played over a scene where the character is in a confused psychological state, and apparently the music perfectly expressed that vibe. It doesn’t have lyrics but if it did have maybe they would go something like this:
’Breathe on me, eclipse my mind. It’s in some kind of disarray.’

ARB Section 1 https://youtu.be/pHIgRNFuYsk?si=DVYQoeLu8f7haOiT

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I Keep On Telling You

“ “The most important thing lacking today is the ability to play what’s hanging round your neck. The Pistols started the vibe which was great coz it proved you could get to the crowds without coming on like some super guitarist. But then it degenerated and you got bands just getting up and playing anything as long as it was loud and fast”

“What we try to do is link both areas so you get this high energy and musical ability”. [‘Gino’ Williams]

Which is what they’ve got. As a band they are enignatic on stage. Mark Hollis, lead vocals ειnd rhythm axe, stands, legs askance, ready to blow a lot of “name” bands off the boards. To an extent this kid is personified Rock and Roll.” Unpublished ReAction review by potentially the first ever Hollis superfan, Geoff Baker, writing for the Express and Echo, Exeter, 1978

“[Punk was] the most important musical thing that has ever happened in my lifetime. There was so much emphasis on enthusiasm and energy – as opposed to ability. To me, the possibility of being in a band was so remote, but that whole movement opened it up.” Mark Hollis talking to Hayley Bartlett in Record Collector, 1998.

Tracks by The ReAction behave like YouTube whack-a-mole – one minute they are there, the next, gone. You have to be quick to catch ‘em. I believe that the version of I Keep on Telling You linked below is a Hollis demo version, re-recorded after the band split. It’s not a completely different song from the version the band demoed for their pipe-dream of an album. But it is definitely different. The ReAction play it with guitars upfront, aggressive and a bit weird. They were a punk band after all. But it’s Mark Hollis, innit, so the punk is informed by American psyche garage bands like The Electric Prunes rather than fellow Londoners Steve Jones and Joe Strummer.
The re-recorded I Keep on Telling you is a tad more cheery, you might even say poppy – are those handclaps? I do love a song with handclaps. The outro is extended…I keep on telling you, repeated ad infinitum , because he keeps on telling you, right? It’s such a Hollis phrase – I swear I’ve read about him spitting it at interviewers in the 80s.

And then there’s that very familiar opening line. Spooky.

I Keep On Telling You (Mark Hollis Demo Version)https://youtu.be/b1SzES5XSg0?si=goiyQG3b3cVxSFMP

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I Believe In You

There’s an awful lot of bollocks been written about I Believe In You – some of it by me! It’s time for a Talk Talk Mythbusters post – IBIY 2026 revised edition .

1. A choir? First off, it’s definitely a choir (well, six boy choristers, anyway) – that’s a note for the chap on YouTube who did a First-Time-Listen Reaction Video and wondered if that heavenly sound might be synths. Synths on Spirit of Eden? Wash your mouth out.

2. Did the choir make the tea lady cry? Well, we know there was a tea lady at Wessex (her name was Betty), and we know (thanks to Stuart Stawman) that the choir(s) could be heard beyond the studio, and we know the finished song is extremely moving, so, probably.

3. Is that a sneeze at the end? I’ve always heard what I thought was a sneeze as the song fades out, but when I asked Phill Brown, he said “It’s not a sneeze!” in his curmudgeonly fashion, but of course he didn’t say what it was. According to Stuart Stawman the choir is singing “how long, spirit of illusion” so perhaps that “sneeze” is the sh sound in ‘illusion’.

4. Heroin? Yes, ‘heroin’ is in the lyrics. This fact, coupled with tales of the oil-projector-lit darkened-for-months studio, led an English music magazine to conclude that the entire recording process was opiate-fuelled, and, by extension, that Mark Hollis himself was a junkie. They were made to retract that fabrication, yet the awful lie persisted, especially when the obituaries flooded the internet, written by bloggers with half a clue and a hunger for clicks. Phill Brown copped to the occasional spliff to deal with the intensity of the recording process, and he wasn’t the only one; but it seems that, rather than heroin, Spirit of Eden was brought to you by cups of tea (cheers Betty), pub curries and the enthusiastic use of the word ‘cunt’.

5. Is the song about Ed Hollis, who died – after decades of substance abuse – before it was released (or written, depending on who is telling the story)? Mark Hollis never said that it was about his brother. His family has sent the word out recently that it was written for a friend. Whoever it’s about, Ed was alive when it was written, and alive when it was released, and that’s all there is to it.

i Believe In You (album version)    https://youtu.be/tSg2OIFum3o?si=QQFoKVysU7lopJjl

I believe in you (single version) https://youtu.be/AD8M_HVauls?si=WYoqFuAgcCzPWHp_

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It’s You

God only knows – I’ve noticed you

Written down like that it doesn’t look like much, but as sung by the writer, a devastating line. A six word story inside a lyric that feels like you’re accidentally overhearing one side of a private conversation. Stop eavesdropping, is how I feel. Walk away.

The voice of Mark […] is to cry.
@simoforever75,YouTube, 2022

“It’s You”, is a Talk Talk Deep Cut, aka an-album-track-many-fans-overlook, except for the few who say that it is their Favourite. Going by the above-mentioned YouTube comments section, the Favourite status is mostly down to the patented ‘Hollis Crying’ TM vocal.

When I’m listening to the studio version I like to imagine that somewhere there is video of the core Talk Talk Trio – Hollis Harris & Webb – playing it live for some bonkers Europop TV show. Just drums bass and vocal. That would have been truly revolutionary. Never happened.

Me, without the daydreams, I prefer the live versions of this tune to the super-synthy studio version, and there were many – It’s You made the setlist nearly every night of the Colour of Spring Tour. Not so much on the “It’s My Life” tour , which is odd, but whatever. Maybe it took them a while to figure this one out.

But once they figured it out, it went from Deep Cut to Live Staple.

Blessedly, in the live versions, the synths are way back in the mix, it’s bass forward, drums forward, dance forward. At some point Ian Curnow will bust out a slightly unhinged Atonal Jazz solo. At Salamanca, Hollis stops to listen to it, he is nodding – is it approval or is he just keeping time?

‘It’s You’ at Salamanca. Hollis hiding in plain sight, his hair twisting into wild shapes as he sings, you can’t see his face – but he can’t hide his voice and to hear it is to cry.

The only tiny catch is, with the live versions, you do miss out on the ultra-extended fade-out on the studio version. The extremely long outro is the evil twin of the extremely short intro; 0-60 in one beat. The overwhelming synths won’t wait. I do love a well-placed synth so I try to convince myself that my preference for the live version is not a diss of the synth-heavy studio version. But, truely, it is.

 

It’s youhttps://youtu.be/QTYw5M8Aqj4?si=FvkTrIkKF2n02m8Y

It’s you Live at Salamanca 1986 https://youtu.be/1PriN0TsZGI?si=N8hMaTN12hT37DGW

 

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Hate

“…listen to a song like ‘Hate’ for instance, you don’t need guitars to sound aggressive”.

“On the cover of the single we wore all-white clothes. The whole idea behind that was the music being opposite to the colour and us getting up and singing about ‘Hate’, dressed up whiter than white, well I s’pose I wouldn’t have seen it.”- Mark Hollis talking to Jim Reid, Record Mirror and Betty Page, Noise, July 1982

“This one’s our ballad. It’s called Hate” – a sarcastic introduction from Mark Hollis as recorded live for the BBC, 1982.

Mark Hollis seemed determined to frame “Hate” as Talk Talk’s most aggro punk rock moment, and it’s true that Lee Harris is out there beating up his kit like it owes him money, that the whole thing kicks off with Hollis screaming HATE! and that it likely has the most BPMs of any album track Talk Talk ever recorded… but, wait. Can we take a moment to check the lyrics?

the child’s not there, the priest is losing faith, defile my care

Defile my care? To those who can’t see any connection between synthpop Talk Talk and postrock Talk Talk, who insist they they are different beasts, that baby Talk Talk didn’t at all inform the grown-up, just look at that there. Sure, Hate is a bit pacey, as TFG would have it, but those lyrics are pure Hollis, don’t you think. And, yes,  the poetry became sketchier and more abstract as time went on, but the central theme recognisably remains.

The contrarian strikes again. The most aggressive part of Hate is the title. After the opening yelp, any pretence at anger falls away, until eventually the frantic drumbeats transform into a pretty coda.

Don’t say a word
if I’ve been away too long
I found out it’s wrong
I found out I don’t need hate

I don’t think we can blame the white suits on Hate, as much as Mark Hollis might want us to, might want to talk up an irony beyond the irony that is already in existence within Hate. Because there’s the punchline, right there. ‘Here’s a song about hate, but it’s actually not about hate, it’s about…not hate?’

That would be a love song, then.

 

Hate, Live, 1982.https://youtu.be/u3BP5jfXIPI?si=DRlm6y_gQeWiXunV

 

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Again A Game…Again

“Take my hand
Colours seem so black inside your head”

Another terrific opening couplet from the king of them. There’s a whole story in those two lines. It’s not so far removed from “Lay your hands into my hands, I’ve been rude”, another two lines containing multitudes. .

Hands are a recurring feature in Pop-Era Hollis lyrics – in Such A Shame they are trembling, in Dum Dum Girl there are coins inside, and in Living in Another World the hand held may contain angels. Even later in the piece, in Post-Everything-Hollis era, there’s “Weighted my hand, get hard hit to sin, to sail” which also might be an incredible short story in a pair of lyrics or maybe it means nothing at all but it sounds right.

Again A Game …Again – maybe this too means nothing at all but just sounds right. You don’t have to read too many Talk Talk lyrics before you start to notice the homophones, or near-homophones – like the title of this song. Again a game with words, again.

Another Only-Ever-A-B-Side, this was even more exclusive in that it was Only-Ever-A-B-Side in Canada and America, on the flip of Its My Life. The rest of us got an album track on the back of that single – Does Caroline Know? Did we get ripped off? It’s hard to say. I like an exclusive B-Side generally, but compared to the bucolic and delightful Does Caroline Know, Again A Game…Again sounds like it could almost be a leftover from The Party’s Over. It’s very nearly a banger, synthy and upbeat, more 1982 than 1984. It probably sounded – at the time – like a song the American market expected to hear from a British ‘New Wave’ band. It’s almost like they wrote it specially.

It’s not generic tho, unless the genre is Talk Talk.

Those phonetically precise, downcast lyrics:

There are times I confess
I’m not easy to accept

The trumpety bass. Big Harris beats. It’s all so unmistakably Talk Talk.

And just to be reassure you that it’s really not a counterfeit, the master’s signature can be seen,or rather, heard, in the dying seconds of the song, where everything drops out, besides a plinkity plonk scrabble of slowly fragmenting piano notes, raindrops in a tin bucket. Yeah that’s a Hollis Song for sure.

Again A Game…Again https://youtu.be/lmgrxgHTNwI?si=ZXYLtHd8ZRiyaEzW