Last updated March 19, 1998
Whatever happened to Talk Talk ? You must remember them, a rather faceless band who had two medium-sized hits with "Talk Talk" itself and "Today", and then disappeared from sight, squire.
It is now well over a year since the dancefloors of the nation reverberated to the aforementioned tunes, and bar the very occasional live show, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Talk Talkers had shut up for good. Not so, Mark Hollis and his cohorts now have a rather fine new album in the shops, and are currently undergoing some rather frenzied rehearsals for an imminent British tour.
Welcome back to the game lads, but where on earth have you been?
"We've just been getting the album together really," explains mainman Hollis "making sure that it would be a significant development from the first one. The business of being out of the public eye doesn't really worry us, because all that is important is that we get the product right, and yeah, we're definitely very happy with it."
Bassist Paul Webb confirms that Talk Talk are a band more concerned with music than image.
"We just never got caught up with all that business of getting your face in the magazine, the sort of here's the face, here's the image, and, oh by the way, here's the music sort of attitude. We reckon that as long as the music's good, then everything else will follow."
This somewhat quaint approach to selling your wares might just have something to do with the fact that Talk Talk are perhaps the classic case of a band without a ready-made market.
"Yes," agrees Hollis, "we are a pretty hard act to define. Really the only thing that you can safely say about us is that we always work around orthodox song structures. Apart from that we draw our influences from all different sorts of music, and never just the one thing."
"Like for example, On 'Tomorrow Started', the intro reminds you of Erik Satie, the verse is maybe closer to Pharoah Saunders, and then the sort of Marvin Gaye rhythm vibe comes in. And all that is just a reflection of the fact that my whole life has been one long process of being into lots of different types of music. Pink Floyd, King Crimson, John Lee Hooker, The Standells, Chocolate Watch Factory, everything through to Shostakovich and Prokofiev."
This excellent list brings about two immediate reactions in my bemused little brain. One, that sinking feeling of wasted days in the college of music reasserts itself; and two, it's surely little wonder that Mr Hollis and his band find themselves so much out on a limb.
"I guess we are very much against the grain at the moment," he says, "but then we have never really been part of a distinct movement. The first album was probably quite close to post-punk new wave, and we were definitely keen to get across a feeling of energy, but then, as far as I was concerned, all that was taken a bit too far by other people, and moved away from working within the structure of songs. "What we are doing on the new album is not to use chords to block things, but instead give everything a lot more room to develop. And hopefully the next album will be just as different again."
It will surely be in the live sphere, however, where this band will win over any new supporters, and here Hollis promises a significant change from the last set of public outings.
"It will be very different this time, because we are now actually a six-piece band for live purposes. No way will it just be a straight duplicate of the album, as there are going to be a lot of new ideas in there as well, as I can quite easily see songs stretching out to 10 or 15 minutes, no bother."
Now that would certainly be interesting, and is probably just the sort of extreme gesture needed to galvanize the listening public, and move Talk Talk away from their current position of being seen and heard as the very essence of blandness.
Whatever happened to Talk Talk? Now's your chance to find out.