Talk Talk were a fairly anonymous band who came out of the early 80s post-punk electro-pop era where the cool sensibilities of David Sylvian/Japan melded with Kraftwerk-influenced rhythms. Duran Duran, Fashion & Depeche Mode were at the forefront of the movement, although an awful lot of pop music of the time nodded in the direction. There is little to say of the band's early career, for the simple reason that almost nothing stood out. Any person who could honestly say that they could foresee their subsequent success is either a liar or blessed with gifts Nostradamus would have envied.

That future arrived when they released "The Colour of Spring" and moved themselves into a different world. Mixing children's choirs, over-driven rock slide guitar coupled with Hollis' downbeat proto-Sylvian "oh well, if I have to..." vocal style, it wasn't so much genre-busting as creating an entirely new set of musical expressions. The music world sat up and took notice; Tim Hollis, a major talent had arrived. I know it's a cliche, but this is genuinely an album that would grace any collection. Powerful, sensitive and in places desperately beautiful, this is the work of a thoroughbred hitting his stride.

And so to the difficult "follow that" album. It is genuinely interesting to play the post-OK computer albums of RadioHead alongside the Talk talk albums to find two groups of people wrestling with similar problems and coming to utterly different conclusions. RadioHead went outward, wrestling with a corporate culture that was as parasitic as it was financially rewarding. Talk talk went inward to conjure forth their demons. Such choices may denied them fame and fortune, but theirs was a prophet's virtuous path into the stony desert. Unlike RadioHead, they didn't so much reject commercialism so much as they were too unworldy to notice the riches that were offered them.

Yet they were not unappreciated; it was common to hear sentiments from other bands of the time saying things like "Every band loves Talk talk; to be out there, doing what they do and still be successful. It just gives you hope"

If there is a binding alchemy behind the band, it is that Perfection is attained in the nature of imperfection : The precisely wrong thing will be transcendent. Even when the music becomes difficult, obscure and meandering, it's always webbed with gossamer-thin threads of golden inspiration, waiting to reward any listener willing to turn the cloth. There is a story that one recording session featuring  a children's choir created something so beautiful that all who heard it cried. Performers, writers, technicians; all were convinced that day had brought forth something that would live beyond them. So the band were distraught to discover the next morning that Hollis had returned to the studio at daybreak to erase all of the tapes of the previous day's work. Such perfection, in his eyes, made the spirit lazy.

One can hear this attitude exemplified in the song "Spirit", from the next album Spirit of Eden, where the melancholic beginning leads into a sustained organ chord that twists and writhes as if containing a demon, curled up in agony howling a voiceless primal scream that comes from the nameless numbing terrors only abyssal guilt and grief can form. You don't create such vapour through perfection, it is not such a moment; rather it is what it creates for the listener. Such ambience needs more than care. No longer desperately beautiful the pain evoked is instead beautifully desperate.

And so to the final album, Laughing Stock. Now no longer making music as a cry of desperation, Hollis evokes the satisfied resolve of a man about to create artistic suicide. Just the titles of the songs tell you this is the story of the artist's evolving feelings about his career; from the promise of "Myrrhman", the success in "Ascension Day", the anti-climax of "After the flood", the hangover of "Taphead", and the hope of "New grass" and now "Rune II".

Typically obtuse, it begins with a minute of silence, although if you listen carefully you can hear the hum of amplifiers. When the guitar eventually breaks in it sounds late and hesitant,  seemingly setting a tone of uncertainty;-

Place my chair at the backroom door
Help me up
I can't wait anymore

Yet this mood changes as the album continues, it evokes the feeling of a career that both disappointed yet illuminated; this was your time and yet time was never yours. At once waiting and invoking, both rite and mantra, the clash and discord, the beauty of the beast, the album is Hollis' almost shamanic journey towards inner resolution, he is making peace with this time of his life.

The final song's lyrics read;-

Well, aren't you suspect
In answer unread
meander context
so effortlessly blessed

and career-wise with that sign off, the Prophet smiled at his followers, stepped back from the dais, turned and with a look of absolute confident bliss, stepped into empty air.

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This was originally published as a comment in the Open Thread ; re-published here by popular request