Talk Talk's Mark Hollis - It Never Ends

Four glasses of red wine on a Monday night is very unusual for me, but after dinner with friends I got on the bus home in that lovely halfway-house state of being too drunk to read but in the perfect place for music.  I fired up Tangerine Dream's ‘Movements of a Visionary' - something to complement the noisy Shoreditch lights - and opened Twitter to check the state of the nation.  Brexit was, of course, still an omnishambles, but none of that suddenly mattered as I attempted to process the words 'RIP Mark Hollis'.  The Tangerine Dream track was curtailed, and Spirit of Eden was mainlined from mobile to headphones.  The bus moved inexorably up the Kingsland Road – coincidentally towards Mark’s birthplace in Tottenham - and I settled into a sad melancholy, listening again to one of the greatest albums ever made.    

"Baby, life's what you make it"

The Talk Talk aficionados tend to insist that the final two albums compete head-to-head, Spirit of Eden just edging out Laughing Stock, or vice versa.  But that argument can obscure the earlier songs.  I adore perfect pop, but even more than that I love pop that is both perfect and beguiling (distinct from that inadequate cliché 'throwaway').  'It's My Life' and 'Such a Shame' are just that, able to withstand countless listens and still go on to reveal new things.    

But what of those final two albums?  I find myself - just about - in the Spirit of Eden camp, although I still rate Laughing Stock very highly.  Highly enough to often listen on my early morning runs.  Aptly, the track 'New Grass' always arrives just as I'm about to take to the lush, green ground to do my press-ups and sit-ups.  As I press against the earth, the gentle drums and dashes of piano signal a sense of rebirth, albeit one laced with an Eliotesque futility - 'February is the cruelest month' (climate change now paraphrasing poetry).  It's an album steeped in religious imagery, perhaps more difficult than its predecessor, but endlessly rewarding.  'Ascension Day' played loudly and intimately is an aural joy.  "Bet I'll be damned!" cries Hollis.  Not if he's being judged on music like this! 

"Place my chair at the backroom door"

Then there’s Spirit of Eden.  It's an astonishing piece of work that seems a million miles away from what came before (listen closely though and you hear echoes of the earlier pop).  Suddenly, Talk Talk seem a very different band, melding multiple genres in just the space of a few bars: classical, progressive rock, jazz, electronic music and even blues and folk.  I love this record's sudden moments of sturm and drang, particularly on 'Eden' as the clanging guitar catches fire.  (Did I imagine it or did Elbow's Guy Garvey state that this track is the reason that you need to invest in a quality hi-fi?)  In line with Hollis' hints, there's also more than a dash of Miles Davis in here too – a deceptively meandering jazzy pace that lifts you up and takes you on an extraordinary journey.  Like Van's Astral Weeks, you should always listen to Spirit of Eden from start to finish.  Curiously, my favourite thing on the album is the soothing yet vaguely sinister sound of a fishing line being reeled back and forth, adding a bucolic and dreamy edge to the background of the first two tracks.  Indeed, the opener 'The Rainbow' is as good as music gets, its moods shifting again and again.  Music like weather.  British weather, changing, understated, never settling in one place for long.  The clouds scud across the sun and colour drains from the garden.  And then a sudden spark of sunlight returns and all is well.

Unusually (for me) the actual words are secondary.  If you search out Hollis' lyrics they are vague and somewhat impenetrable.  But the sound of his voice is to the fore, a pleading baritone that does something similar, albeit at a lower pitch, to that of the Cocteau Twins’ Liz Fraser.

"Oh yeah, the world's turned upside down"

Death temporarily changes music, the prism adjusting to let darker, more sombre colours through. Listening to 'It's My Life' on the bus this morning, and suddenly caught out by Mark Hollis' exclamation that 'it never ends', added a melancholy tinge of irony to the song.  Talk Talk split in the early 90s, and apart from a well-received solo album in 1998, Mark Hollis quit music to spend more time with his family.  The lyrics of the gorgeously melancholic 'Westward Bound' from that eponymous final piece of work – "Glowing in the wonder of our first child, there my promise is" – hint towards his priorities.  It was his life and there’s no arguing with that.