Tag: Talk Talk

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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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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

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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

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Candy

“Mark has a classic English voice, reminiscent of early Spencer Davis. It’s perfect for the slow numbers like ‘Carolyn’ and ‘Candy’ the latter of which will be the band’s debut single. It’s a sad song that broods and dreams splendidly.” – Vicky Jolly reviewing a very early Talk Talk gig in Sounds, 1982.

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I consider the counterfactual where Talk Talk’s first single was the epic Candy rather than the DOA Mirror Man. I was bummed out when I first read the review above and discovered that they had actually considered Candy as a debut single. I think it would have been great.

By 1982, both songs had been around for a while – in Mark Hollis’s musical world anyway. They were remnants of the ReAction setlist, Mirror Man mostly remade by the new band, Candy much the same as it was when performed by The ReAction. Both songs were recorded for Talk Talk’s first set of demos. The vocal on that demo version of Candy is spectacular – or, should I say, vocals. The harmonies OMG. Who is that? Simon? Paul? Hollis double-tracked? It’s hard to say but it sounds dreamy. In fact, it broods and dreams splendidly.

So why wasn’t it their first single? My guess is that it just fell out of favour. Maybe they (and by ‘they’ I probably mean Mark Hollis, who always appeared to have the last word) didn’t like the production, maybe they were just sick of it, in the way they never seemed to get sick of Talk Talk, the second single. Talk Talk was seemingly played at every gig ever, whereas Candy dropped out of the setlist almost immediately.

Poor Candy. Not only left by the wayside, but unfortunately numbered amongst the songs in the TT catalogue rumoured to be about heroin. Why was this such a recurring theme? Was it an eighties thing? A post punk thing? Why did it attach itself to four handsome young men in white suits? I mean, I hate to even mention it, honestly, because I have no wish to revive that speculation; from this distance I am dumbfounded by it. Maybe it was just the obtuseness of the Hollis lyrics and his vocal tone – ‘What’s that about, then? Sounds sad, maybe drugs? Yeah that works.”

Candy, forever a mystery. But a beautiful mystery.

Candy (demo)https://youtu.be/eEBCAtvKbAk?si=kimq7i1ZsWxjFPFP

Candy – The ReActionhttps://youtu.be/uoPUeEl0lJE?si=9NEMOaRU_0GBOhkT

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New Grass

“A few days after this experience, I was listening to [New Grass] and something sounded familiar. Harris was playing that exact same rhythm on his ride cymbal and snare. But instead of being sonically surrounded by energetic poly-rhythms and call-and-response vocals, his rhythm was inhabiting its own space among languid melodies, a bed of organ tones, and patient vocals. A closer listen revealed that his kick drum was, at times, percolating in syncopation with the ride rhythm and then countering it, much like the way the various rhythms of the African ensemble pull and release against each other. Harris seemed to be doing this in order to divide up the insistent 3/4 time, to reinforce the downbeat of the snare drum. Pushing and pulling the rhythm like this gives the song it’s forward motion but also props up the back beat.

I’m not sure if he was cognisant of the parallels between what he was doing and the ancient rhythms of the Ewe tribe, but it doesn’t matter – what he did was too creatively genuine to be guilty of “exoticism”. It’s completely brilliant, and, in my opinion, one of the best drum performances in rock history. “ – Mike Weis, “Spirit of Talk Talk”, 2012.

I thought I loved the paintings of Roy Lichtenstein but I had only ever seen them reproduced page size so how could I even know? Until last week, when I found myself in a room for the first time ever with an actual Roy Lichtenstein painting. Now I definitely love the paintings of Roy Lichtenstein. It is the scale that makes them make sense. Small, in a book, his paintings appear mechanical, machine made, a screen of dots. But at their true size you can lean in close and see that every single dot is hand painted.

New Grass is a song that wants to keep us at a distance, admiring its incredible beauty, unable to bring the dots into focus. It doesn’t want us to see the brush marks. But do lean in closer for a bit, like Mike Weis did when he noticed the brush marks made by Lee Harris.

New Grass is hard to focus on, isn’t it? Like the faintest stars, the ones you can’t see if you look straight at them. It’s a mirage, a chimera; go now and listen intently to every moment of New Grass. Bet you can’t.

New Grass fan videohttps://youtu.be/BI_c7hflLhY?si=D9EK9PVgYmbkBdVg

Roy Lichtenstein https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/features/roy-lichtenstein-learning-resource