Last updated January 26, 1998
From Melody Maker, September 7, 1991
TALK TALK
Laughing Stock
(Verve)
I may as well attempt to describe the dawn for you.
"Laughing Stock" begins with 18 seconds of amplifier hiss and it is instantly apparent that Talk Talk have achieved the improbable — made an album even more skeletal and abstract than "Spirit of Eden", even more organic, even closer to your inner ear. Each record they make now is an "Astral Weeks" — about its own atmosphere, an encapsulation, a world of its own.
How do they manage it? Apparently, "Spirit of Eden" took the best part of a year to create in the cavernous converted church of Wessex Studios. They turned the place into a kind of opium den, filled with candles and incense and liquid patterns projected onto the control-room walls. The sessions were slow and meticulous. Legend has it they once spend two days recording a string quartet and kept just one moment, a mistake the cellist had made. Another time brought in a large gospel choir, at considerable expense, captured some astonishing singing and then erased it all the following day. The spaces left by those decisions are important. You can hear them. Talk Talk records breathe. The detail is everything. Often, the tracks sound as if all the superstructure has been removed, like paint separated from its canvas, just a tissue of colour.
"Myrrhman", the opening song, is a prime example; a few flecks of viola and guitar held in place by the ambience of the room, delicate as a dragonfly wing. There are strokes of piano and double bass and Lee Harris — always an impressively sensitive and imaginative drummer — provides specks of brushed snare and cymbal. Above, no, amongst it lies Mark Hollis' unique and fragile voice. The sense is obscured, but his yearning tone is supremely articulate, seemingly aching for peace, redemption, and end to unknowingness.
Like Peter Green's extraordinary last works for Fleetwood Mac, Hollis appears to be reaching towards faith, seeking something to believe in. Somehow, "Ascension Day" manages to recreate the inner clamour of confusion, the turmoil of doubt, using a burning guitar sound, distorted organ and some splashy percussion. It erupts and ascends but, unable to resolve, stops dead at exactly six minutes. It's a startling moment.
Where previous albums have been CD clear and icy pure, "Laughing Stock" is bruised and grimy. Guitars buzz on the edge of screaming feedback, the strings flirt with discord, the brass is cracked and broken. "After the Flood" is tremendously brooding. In fact, there's a palpable sense of latent power throughout the album, as if, at any moment, Hollis will explode or expire from his frustration and sorrow. It's the tension that keeps it from being too solemn.
It's apt that Polydor have resurrected Verve — the label started in the 1950s by jazz impresario Norman Granz — for this release, as its explicit sense of mood places "Laughing Stock" closer to jazz than anything else, especially on "New Grass", the album's longest and most beautiful piece. Its mellow swing recalls the crepuscular fade to Van Morrison's "Madame George" or the translucent work of Bill Evans.
So, "Colour of Spring", "Spirit of Eden", and now "Laughing Stock". I make that three masterpieces in a row. It's tempting to wonder how they can possibly refine their vision any further. I hear the arguments about it being po-faced, a white, male, middle-class view of the world, but what the hell, why shouldn't it be? We should rejoice that somebody can still make records this adventurous. Talk Talk are certainly the most individual, possibly the most important group we have. Next to this glorious album most of what you have heard this year will seem inept and insignificant. Believe in it.
JIM ARUNDEL