366) Talk Talk Spirit of Eden

In 1982 a band released their debut which contained their pop hits Talk Talk and Today, It took a few years and then they really hit the big time with their third record The Colour of Spring that propelled them into the top ten and they became a huge selling and respected band.

Bigger sales gave the band a bigger budget and they could really explore. Ater all the hits from The Colour of Spring I would have loved to have been in the room when the executives listened to Spirit of Eden. This is a band unrecognisable from their early synth sound and have decided on experimental not commercial.

Mark Hollis and co-writer Tim Friese-Greene favoured improvised performances and then pieced the songs together with the recording taking roughly a year. Forget just the synths according to Wikipedia we have many additional musicians and we all know what a dobro, shozygs and a cor anglais are so I’ll not go into where they feature!

Six tracks in forty-one minutes this is not an album to shuffle, and I will pick a track to stream but really this is a record to experience as a whole. This review should just say, listen to the whole album and that’s all.

Selected highlights are really all I can give you.

Opener The Rainbow builds slowly layer upon layer but of course at seven minutes when a harmonica solo comes in, I am sold, sublime.

Eden at two minutes thirty-two seconds the music explodes, and Hollis comes back in as he releases his vocal interlocking his voice with the music which ebbs and flows and listen to the wonderful noise they make on Desire underpinned with guitar and piano as dare, I say it Talk Talk rock out.

Hollis’s decision to retire from making music was a real loss and he had a unique distinctive voice that he used as an instrument within the song, Inheritance is a perfect example although not as engaging as the other tracks but that’s no slight. I Believe In You we have drums from the start but midway we drift into a blitzed-out melody of instruments.

Wealth, we have a church organ with electronic sounds with Mark letting rip with the lyric “take my freedom,” before the band fade away to silence.

Play this record repeatedly until its beauty and brilliance reveal itself to you and then have a go at me for not giving it a ten.

9.75/10

GIVE IT A STREAM:  Desire