Talk Talk - Laughing Stock
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.09 You Save: $7.85 (66%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Laughing Stock
Free Music Review: Laughing Stock
Hit: 5 Stars
This is how music should be.I will never tire of Talk Talk's final album Laughing Stock. From their first album until The Colour of Spring (1986) Talk Talk very definitely held my attention. The Colour of Spring is one of the best albums of the 8o's, no questions asked. And then they released 1988's Spirit of Eden. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. A total departure from where 'Life's What You Make it' seemed to say they were heading. I love Colour of Spring, but Spirit of Eden is something else. The first three songs from that album are worth the price alone.
And then there is Laughing Stock. It takes off where Spirit of Eden began, and i have heard nothing like it since. I've heard some acts emulate it, or incorporate its textures (Cowboy Junkies, Portishead come to mind), but no one will ever come close to what Talk Talk achieved on Laughing Stock.
I remember listening to this album for the first time, and realised that this is how the music industry should always have been. Displaying great pieces of creativity with support and pride. yeah right, like you can expect that. And that this album got deleted immediately is no surprise. 6 songs in all, but this album is so beautiful it goes beyond words. It incorporates Delta Blues, Mingus jazz, psychedelia, orchestral bombast and subtlety all in 6 songs. I have never heard anything like it before or since, and I miss Talk Talk as a group ever since. But if this is how they chose to go out, I can only commend them for going out with a style that is rarely seen in the music business.
The main theme of Laughing Stock seems to be about Redemption. Anyone familiar with Christian doctrine regarding Revelations will know what Ascension Day may refer to. This whole album seems to wrestle with the divine and the human. The limitations we feel as humans to overcome our deepest fears and drives. From the beginning of Myrrhman through til Taphead, these ruminations are explored lyrically and musically. This whole album seems like the journey of a soul. The reason that 'New Grass' seems a light relief is not only a musical one. Whats explored in After The Flood and Taphead seems an allusion to the fable of Noah and his Ark. And that 'New Grass' seems to imply that Hope is found once again after a great deluge only adds to the imagery and sonic explorations of Laughing Stock.
Laughing Stock is a summers day. It is the dead of night. Its so many things from song to song that I have always seen this work as a goal to aim for. As a musician, composer, you owe it to yourself to find and buy this album. As a music listener or lover, you owe it to yourself to find and buy this album. The only other album I can think of that is such a one of a kind is Kate Bush's The Dreaming. You hear it, and realise there is nothing like it. Thats what its all about. Thats what it should always be.
Laughing Stock. One of the best albums of the 9o's, and by far one of the best albums ever released. I'd actually beg you to buy it.
Free Music Review: Unbelievably, even unbearably emotional, but, so beautiful
Hit: 5 Stars
The jazzy Colour Of Spring and less accessible Spirit Of Eden might have firmly moved Talk Talk out of the 1980s synth-pop that never suited Hollis' mumbling, but plaintive vocals, but it was only with "Laughing Stock" that Talk Talk really came of age.
Reduced to a basic trio of Hollis, Tim Friese-Greene and Lee Harris as a result of the departure of bassist Paul Webb, the effect was very clearly felt. The first song, "Myrrhman", might seem almost to be just soft and roughly orchestrated strings and horns upon first listen, but after a few listens the logic behind the interceptions of a few repeated notes on acoustic guitar begins to surface because of the fact that this guitar is part of the orchetration. The deep, mumbling vocals are the perfect complment: this is stark, simple music where the whole purpose is to use the most limited talents of as many people as possible.
Nothing on Talk Talk's previous output will prepare one for the following two tracks. As Mark Hollis imagines himself seeking redemption on "Ascension Day" and "After The Flood", he injects the orchestrated rock (piano, organ, strings, trumpet, contrabass clarinet) with an intensity that is starker than punk ever was. This virginal music reaches an absolute apogee every time Hollis guitar releases the tension because we see how important each part is to the unbelievable sense of despair conveyed. Every word from Hollis - and there are not that many - managed to sound as if he was literally and deeply frightened of his future.
The second half, perhaps out of necessity, was a release of the tension of the virginal music of the first side, but the austerity did not let go until the stings and horns on the amazing, wordless "Taphead" move with a flow that almost suggest classical music, yet Hollis in the early and closing parts of "Taphead" showed that the move towards a rawer sound was for real with the sparsest electric guitar you will hear. So simple and soft is it that one really feels every note: the absence of Paul Webb freed Hollis in a surprising and overlooked manner to bare his soul in a way that fits the album's altogether depressing tone: Hollis gives each word the intensity of a pain most people would never overcome, unlike the often joyful tone of earlier Talk Talk songs like "April 5th".
The closer "Runeii" was reflective, wordless again and truly piano-based, whilst "New Grass", at almost ten minutes, seemed to sum up the orchestral, deep yet virginal sound of the five other tracks.
"Laughing Stock" is a record that will truly make you feel about your music. So emotional are the few words on it that its depressing character actually gets the music under one's skin. There is almost no record like that - anywhere.
Free Music Review: Simply the greatest album ever made
Hit: 5 Stars
This album ranks as the single greatest album of all time, in its immersive, breath-taking beauty and singularly groundbreaking innovation. An album that starts from the ground (silence) up, built on thought-provoking lyrics and simple acoustic melodies, with six simplistic and heartbreakingly beautiful songs that defined a new, undefinable genre: some called it 'post-rock' or 'avant garde', but most denied even to try and brand it with a label. It's unclassifiable, proving Talk Talk were truly the most innovative group of their (and perhaps all) time.
'Myrrhman' is silence and sound at the same time. It starts with twenty seconds of hissing feedback and nothing else, then lightly and sporadically strummed guitars, single piano notes, and light violin strings gently pervade and build a semi-melody that backs Mark Hollis' gentle vocals, rising and falling in volume, occasional quiet drum beats stepping in to lend their emphasis. As Hollis' vocals waver away, violin strings well up and slowly carry the song to its end.
'Ascension Day' builds around an opposite principle of noticeable sound, starting with pronounced drums and acoustic bass, which then give way to a slamming, howling electric guitar, which only quiet to allow Hollis to sing increasingly shorter verses that eventually dissipate to allow the guitar to resume its tirade, which mounts to slam to a sudden halt.
'After the Flood', which I personally consider the greatest song of all time, starts with a tinkling piano solo superseded by a patient organ ritornelle, joined by a wailing guitar string and gentle drums to lend backing to Hollis' verses. An instrumental section ensues, which uses affected saxophones to create the tumultous wail of honking geese, with then give way to gradually return to Hollis' singing, as the song slowly fades away to an ending.
'Taphead' starts out with a simple six-note guitar solo, which is joined by Hollis' voice for the first few verses, then is eclipsed by howling, blasting horns and low-key organ motifs, which later rejoin with Hollis' voice as he yells 'dust to dust to dust to dust to dust', then fade away into incoherent mumbling and quiet guitar once again.
'New Grass' begins with drums and a strummed guitar, which rise to meet Hollis' singing, then fade into piano, then rise to Hollis' renewed vocals, then slowly fade away again into oblivion.
'Runeii' is built completely around silence. A picked acoustic guitar provides sporadic bits of melody while Hollis' whispers his lyrics, and a few piano notes occasionally play in the far-off background. This song emerges from silence and descends back into it. A fitting metaphor for life. Or Talk Talk themselves.
Free Music Review: The Best Reinvention Of A Band Ever....
Hit: 5 Stars
It's always nice to see a rather sub-par band reinvent themselves into a great band, but this feat is a rare find. Sure, people always mention Radiohead, but they only had one "poor" record to their credit (Pablo Honey). More recently, Silverchair was touted as having abandoned their "kiddie grunge" schtick, but the results were more admirable than actually good with their record Diorama coming off as sort-of a schmaltzy Soft Bulletin.
Talk Talk on their other hand started out as a bad synth-pop band. They really weren't that good. Like, I have a soft spot for synth-pop (Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Human League, etc.), but the old Talk Talk material was just so derivative and unengaging that it made Duran Duran seem rather forward-thinking.
But somewhere around Spirit Of Eden, Talk Talk became a different band entirely. And by Laughing Stock, they were incredible. The best part, though, was just how good they had become. This wasn't just an admirable work; this was brilliance on its own terms. Laughing Stock was, and still is, a wholly beautiful, original, and timeless master-stroke from a band that overhauled their old sound for something that fell between the lines of jazz and what would become post-rock.
The record is a subtly building one; one that skirts dangerously close to being lethargic, yet is much too powerful to ever fall victim to laziness. The opener "Myrrhman" is an almost ambient-like piece complete with quiet horns and a lack of percussion. Mark Hollis' vocal stands out immediately as incredibly soulful and expressive, a trait that would work to the band's advantage.
Tracks such as "Ascension Day," "After The Flood" and "New Grass" stake out territory to be futher explored by the 90's post rock scene, serving as a template for the ground bands like Slint and Tortoise would explore. The loud guitars in "Ascension Day" and the atonal noise in "After The Flood" are introduced in the least pretentious and self-concious manner. For a band that was once geared towards exploiting the popularity of Duran Duran and their ilk, the use of jarringly abrasive touches more suited to bands like Sonic Youth is startling, but it never feels out-of-place.
Laughing Stock is an album's album, a piece that needs to be listened to in one sitting. It takes patience and attention to reap its rewards. The best things about Laughing Stock though is that it's not a band finding genius in comparison to its past work, but a band finding genius on its own terms, divorced from the missteps of their past.
Free Music Review: Wholly original and beautiful.
Hit: 5 Stars
Listening to this and its predescessors Spirit Of Eden and the underrated Color Of Spring, you'd have no idea that Talk Talk started out as an also-ran '80s synth-pop outfit. The band's evolution alienated their original record label (EMI) and probably turned off a good deal of their old fanbase, but they left 3 beautiful, unique records that are musically "post-rock" long before that term entered the indie lexicon.
Gone are most of the synths and any hint of verse/chorus/verse structure. The instrumentation is mostly organic--trumpet, contrabass, acoustic guitar and bass, organ, piano, harmonica, woodwinds, viola, acoustic drums, and touches of electric guitar. The sound is extremely sparse--though the song lengths (on average about 7 minutes) are "progressive" the music does not adhere to the usual prog cliches. Late-period Talk Talk is not about excess displays of virtuosity. This album proves you can say far more with 3 seconds of well-placed silence than a 3-minute barrage of expertly played notes. Laughing Stock has an incredible sense of space and airiness. Every guitar, horn, organ, string, and bass note has purpose and advances the song--the muted horns in the mournful Myrrman, the burning electric guitar slashes in the angry Ascension Day (probably the closest to "rock" this album ever gets), the floating organ and somehow frightening dissonant chords in After The Flood, the prominent drums and uplifting piano on New Grass, and intermittent bass notes giving way to eerie stretches of quiet on the closer Runeii.
Over this backdrop floats Mark Hollis. His plaintive, mournful, and sometimes indiscernible voice is one of pure emotion, and the lyrics speak of redemption, mourning, spirituality ("maybe Christianity will come westward"), hope, anger, and loss.
My rather dry description does not do this remarkable record any justice, and I apologize. Ultimately, Laughing Stock is a beautiful, harrowing album that speaks directly to the human spirit, and is truly one of a kind. Highly, highly recommended. Also pick up its companion (in both theme and music) Spirit Of Eden.