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| From | "Michael Bennett" <mrhonorama@hotmail.com> |
| Subject | Re: talkin bout talk talk |
| Date | Wed, 25 Feb 2004 14:25:02 -0600 |
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Actually, I don't think the claim is that Mark Hollis was a pop genius --
the elevation of Talk Talk began with THE SPIRIT OF EDEN, when they became a
flat-out art band. Long songs with large spaces of silence. This was
really influential on many of the shoegazers and other Brit bands. I don't
know if those last few Talk Talk records (after SPIRIT) came out in the
U.S., so I'm not sure if they inspired any slo-core bands. Hollis's first
solo record really took everything to the extreme -- it makes the early
Cowboy Junkies sound like Slayer, it's so
three-degrees-away-from-John-Cage's-"4'33"'.
Your assessment of the first two TT efforts is spot-on. The album with
"Life's What You Make It" (forgot the title) was a step up from "It's My
Life". But SPIRIT followed and that's when they became geniuses, allegedly.
What I've heard from that era is intellectually interesting, but pretty
dull.
Mike Bennett
Record reviews and more at http://fufkin.com
>From: Stewart Mason <flamingo@theworld.com>
>Has any band undergone a more complete reversal of critical opinion than
>Talk Talk? I remember that when their first record came out -- the EP with
>the song "Talk Talk" on it -- it was basically utterly reviled, at best
>dismissed as lightweight teenybopper fluff. And then the opinion of IT'S
>MY LIFE was basically, "Well, as mid-period Roxy Music ripoffs go, it's not
>entirely awful..." but by the time their last record came out, it was all
>"Mark Hollis is a pop genius of the first magnitude!," an opinion that's
>held sway ever since.
>
>Actually, other than "Life's What You Make it," which has always struck me
>as just okay, I've never heard a note of any Talk Talk records past IT'S MY
>LIFE.
>
>S
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