Spirit

Interesting evening in Sheffield on Monday when I attended a talk and Q&A by the biographer of Talk Talk's Mark Hollis, Ben Wardle. The evening also included a playback of Talk Talk's most celebrated LP, Spirit of Eden.

These author events are becoming more and more popular which matches the large increase of books about pop, and indeed, rock music. 

1988 was a torrid year for popular music. Stock, Aitken & Waterman and dreck like Bros seemingly had a stranglehold on the charts. Spirit of Eden is such an anomaly of the time because unlike virtually everything else, it didn't contain things like a synthesiser, sequencers, click tracks, gated drums etc. I'd say that the only instruments on Spirit of Eden that requires electricity to reach its potential is the Hammond organ, electric guitar and maybe an electric bass guitar used sparingly. There is an electronic instrument on the LP called a variophone but then again, that's something else about Spirit of Eden - the instruments used that are so far outside the bounds of what rock records normally contained. I mean do you know what a shozygs is? Well, you can hear one being played on Spirit of Eden.

It was recorded in an unorthodox manner too. Hollis and co-producer and co-writer Tim Friese-Green would have a basic idea of what they wanted and would then bring in a whole range of session musicians to play whatever they felt like over a very sparse backing track, and in darkness with just a strobe light or oil projector for light. Quite often, when these musicians had left, Hollis would decree that "it didn't feel right" and delete hours and hours of recordings. 

I mean, how do you decide what is right? What was it within him that made him decide that only three notes of Danny Thompson's double bass would be used out of hours of recordings? 

And yet the album works completely. It's so massively understated. For 80% of the vocal, Hollis's voice barely registers above a whisper. Even the band photo on the cover is deliberately obscure.

I have a funny relationship with Spirit of Eden. When it was released, in 1988, I was 17 and a fan of TT's earlier more synthpop albums and also their excellent album from 1986, The Colour of Spring, their real breakthrough album in the UK (although they'd been very popular in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands before then).

I think I was far too young for Spirit of Eden in 1988. I bought it on cassette because I had the luxury in those days of being able to walk to work and would use a Walkman to help me on my way. I recall thinking at the time "What the hell is this? Where's the hooks and choruses?" I really didn't like it. I listened to it once put the tape in a drawer and never touched it again.

Then, in around 2000, a funny thing happened - Q magazine gave away a cover mount CD that was themed around chill out, which was all the rage at the time. Included on that CD were tracks by Goldfrapp (the first time I'd ever heard them) and a lovely song called Underneath the Weeping Willow by the Radcliffe & Riley endorsed American band, Grandaddy.

Also in this CD was a track from Spirit of Eden called Inheritance. And that's when it struck. That's when Spirit of Eden hit for me. Inheritance has this strange woodwind instrumental section that is hugely reminiscent of music that Oliver Postgate would use in Ivor the Engine or The Clangers. Kiddies telly is a weird way into an album as important as Spirit of Eden but that's what struck me. I needed to go back and listen to it again. So the cassette came out of storage and that's when the whole album revealed itself to me. I needed to be nearly 30 and not 17. I was too immature to understand it.

There's a lesson there - if something doesn't hit immediately then leave it and go back to it, years, or even decades later. That's why I try again, annually, with Jeff Buckley's Grace. It's yet to have any kind of impact on me but I'm patient. 

Talk Talk were signed to EMI with the hope that they would be the next Duran Duran. Can you imagine Simon Le Bon writing a lyric like this:

"Desire, whispered, spoken

In time

Rivers oceans

That ain't me babe

I'm just content to relax

Than drown within myself

Of mind

Sheltered broken

Denied

Gifted stolen

Ain't got a bed of excuse for myself

That ain't me babe" 

Hungry Like the Wolf, it ain't. The understatement at work in that lyric is just perfection.

It most definitely isn't a record for everyone but when it does reveal itself to you, you're in for life. My companion on Monday was saying that it isn't something he listens to much, not because he doesn't like it, quite the opposite, but because it isn't that sort of LP that one would listen to all the time. You need to make time for it and give it your full attention. It's also hard to take any of the tracks out of context. The album was intended to be listened to as two separate pieces of music - Side 1 and Side 2.

Oh, and the joke's on Ben Wardle - I haven't bought the book twice; my original first edition was a gift.