Month: April 2026

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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 Unpublished ReAction review by potentially the first ever Hollis superfan, Geoff Baker, writing for the Express and Echo, Exeter, 1978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