Last updated March 27, 1998
From SOUNDS, July 24, 1982
I heard demos of Talk Talk 'early on', and they were nice in a peculiarly old-fashioned sense. Perhaps it was Talk Talk's connections with Ed 'Eddie and the Hot Rods' Hollis, the Southend producer supremo who geared into Talk Talk, and particularly his wee brother Mark, the leader of this bunch, a pleasantly rocky jarring effect that belied their would-be 'futurist'/Sons of Duran Duran (is this medically possible?) links.
Unfortunately, scrub all that out, for 'The Party's Over' is a mess. Talk Talk have been reduced to a severe Limp Limp with production and arrangement the central, crippling problems. Where was brother Ed when the lights went out?
Talk Talk try to go all twee Marc Almond, or wispy Duran Duran or, now and then, they have a forsake-all stomp into ELO country. There's nothing to hang on to here at all, the sound is far too trebly in a production that is far too large for these meagre songs. Everything's a half measure in the end. They would go for that swirling, 'Wuthering Heights' windy sound but they don't quite; they would go the whole hog and hug the Duran and teeny song possibilities but they never do. The compromises are endless.
Talk Talk are old fashioned and they think sluggishly. They're living in a world where the Pleasers are household names. I feel they've got something distinctly better than a Classix Nouveaux, whom this pompous twaddle closely resembles in its sheer unlistenability and in its laughable pomposity. It's probably Marco Hollis himself who, on a 'Talk Talk', or a 'Mirror Man', hints at a grain of songwriting worth up there somewhere. But he has an awful degree of nonsense to get rid of before anything relevant would shine through.
It's meriting of an additional if not too further bruising a note, to add that Hollis's lyrics reflect a general half-heartedness in Talk Talk's debut debacle. They are just not up to scratch for summer '82, and I have to close by contradicting the pleasingly crass EMI handout and saying...this ain't worth much, um, Talk Talk (groan groan)...
Dave McCullough