“When do you know you know you know you learn do you die in sin born again”
This is the opening lyric of Taphead.
I had no idea what the words were when I first heard them, I didn’t even recognise them as words. Not words in English anyway. Just sounds, sounds that seemed to come from a place impossibly far away, impossibly lonely, impossibly dark.
I believe the opening to Taphead is when the strange and shadowy heart of Laughing Stock first properly revealed itself to me. It’s when the penny dropped that this album was something much more than Spirit of Eden part 2. Those lyrics that are nothing, and maybe everything, not quite sung, just whispered really – murmured like a prayer, one review said.
Mark Hollis said he was impressed by the way Malcolm Mooney of Can could sing nonsense lyrics and it ‘didn’t sound stupid’. The beginning of Taphead is his Malcom Mooney moment. Voice as instrument.Yes, there are lyrics, not nonsense; no need to enunciate though. Just enunciate the feeling is all.
“In any case, my lyrics are written about a character who is not myself. He is the one who feels the feelings, who expresses them. And curiously, when I sing these lyrics, when I close my eyes, I feel exactly the same things that he does.” – Mark Hollis quoted in Les Inrockuptibles, September 1991
Taphead is also the name of my blog, hosted on a kiwi blog site called Blogtown, and if I should suddenly disappear from Social Media for the transgression of being a human who cares about other humans and dares to say so, that’s where you’ll find me.