Talk Talk: The Colour of Spring, Spirit of Eden, Laughing Stock

Feels like candles burning, incense. These things were involved in the recording of Spirit of Eden, it is said. Mark Hollis may have come close to bankrupting a record company with the last two records of my favourite three-album run by an eighties band. Is Talk Talk my favourite eighties band? Probably. Even more so than that other eighties band that has something to do with talking. Heads, is it?

The snare sounds like it’s meant to on the Colour of Spring, not exaggerated with layers of reverb like all the other eighties records that were trying to sound like Phil Collins records. In the air every night. I want to write fewer words more frequently about the music, writing, and cinema I like. It’s just a window into who I am at this point; a journal dedicated to my future selves (and the present selves of others, but primarily my future selves). I don’t want to be a cultural critic. I’m not sure how much I respect cultural critics; not a lot, I think. I want to build things. Make stuff. Create. Spend less time commenting on things made by others.

But catalogue.
Commit to memory.
Rhyme with the greats.

We used to listen to Spirit of Eden green-faced and red-eyed in a musty house with a television that would come on randomly at odd hours late at night (or early in the morning, depending on your point of view). We would talk about the seminal role it played in the creation of post-rock, the genre. Along with the darker Slint’s Spiderland, I’d always chime in knowingly. And we would light incense and fry eggs and boil noodles. 

Boy, it’s nice to be 21.