“Talk Talk wrote great songs: this compilation is a splendid reminder of that fact. But they were also an extraordinary bunch of musicians who cannily surrounded themselves with further great players […]most of their releases after 1985 featured recordings where the songcraft and the performance were inseparable, inextricably intertwined, and the results were transcendent. Covering Talk Talk is therefore as fraught with the likelihood of failure as covering My Bloody Valentine – the originals contain a secret ingredient, so one’s only hope is to come up with an entirely new recipe that doesn’t even try to compete.” – The Independent, October 8th 2012, reviewing the Talk Talk covers compilation ’Spirit of Talk Talk’.
There are only two tracks I can bring myself to listen to from the above-mentioned compilation: the instrumental version of April 5th and the Recoil cover of Inheritance, partially voiced by the legendary and much-lauded Jamaican poet, Linton Kwesi Johnson. All of the other cover versions simply make me cringe and crave the originals.
Recoil’s version of Inheritance is – up to a point – so vastly different to the heavenly Talk Talk track that it may as well be another song entirely and LKJ’s whispered narration is the key to that difference.
I am a huge LKJ fan and have been since I first heard his fiercely political poetry as a teenager. I believe that this may be the only recorded instance of LKJ performing someone else’s words. I’m sure he wouldn’t have bothered if those words were anything less than spectacularly great poetry. If proof was ever needed that respect is due to Mark Hollis for the quality of his lyrics, look no further than LKJ reciting Inheritance, where that respect is surely given.
As for the rest of the track, the dubby backing is edgy and tripped-out, and Paul Marshall (Lone Wolf) chimes in with his best effort to channel Mark Hollis, but it’s still not a patch on the Talk Talk original, with its classical breakdowns, off-kilter piano, gossamer organ, grungy guitars and, well, the Hollis vocal, how to describe? Fragile but powerful, delicate but strong, angsty but never pitiful. Can’t be copied, don’t even try.