Month: March 2026

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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

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Call in the Night Boys (Piano Version)

“The opening notes of Call In The Night Boy(s) are in no key at all…you see what [Hollis] allowed me to do: the piano starts with atonal intervals; then I go into some tonal stuff in five, six, seven keys; then I hit the chord bang and then he’s in. If you want to know how good a musician he was; listen to that; nobody else I know could have followed what I played because I don’t stay in the same key, I go into all kinds of stuff and all kinds of tempos…”

Unlike the album version, the ‘Piano Version’ of ‘Call in the Night Boy’ has not dated at all. […] the stark Ramocon arrangement is timeless and glacial, contains no chorus, and allows the listener to roam around the space of the track in the same way Talk Talk’s later work would do. “ Phil Ramocon and Ben Wardle discussing Call in the Night Boys (Piano version) in Mark Hollis: A Perfect Silence.

To compose even just a few sentences about a Talk Talk song generally requires listening to it on repeat for a few days. I’m not complaining, it’s no trouble; in fact it is always a pleasure. The fing is tho, Nigel, the fing is…

…close and repeated listening to a different Talk Talk song every week does tend to lead me to a similar conclusion each time: “This is incredible! It could be the best song they ever recorded!”

And I find myself in that place again today, listening to what is certainly the best thing they ever recorded before TFG arrived on the scene.

Fight me.

Call in the Night Boys – the “Piano Version” of Call in the Night Boy, released as the B side to My Foolish Friend – is simply an exceptional piece of music. Hidden away on the flip side of a between-albums-non-hit single. Did anyone even hear it, in the day? Truely a lost classic. I just can’t recall another ‘pop’ act releasing anything like this in 1983. Maybe Japan, if they still existed in 1983, which they didn’t. Maybe Kate Bush, although she seemed to be taking a bit of a Gap Year at that point.

Only Phil and Mark could have pulled this astonishingly singular and timeless track out of Hackney breakfasts, raw talent, and a bin bag of cassettes. I could listen to it over and over. I HAVE listened to it over and over. I may never stop.

Call in the Night Boys (Piano Version)

https://youtu.be/m2iBetfqoBo?si=G05Ityr60iaCZyX7

Indent: Cecil Taylor

https://youtu.be/TQ_UYNRKvBQ?si=MoJ1BBPRUpvO9YF1