Talk Talk: Spirit of Eden V.S. Laughing Stock

Willing to bet that for a lot of people the answer is whichever one you heard first.

i think that vary well may be the case.

Voted Laughing Stock. It's the one I heard first.

voted Spirit Of Eden.

as a matter of fact, i did hear it before Laughing Stock (Ned!) but i feel it's the overall winner in the TT catalog. more varied in sound n' dynamics than Laughing Stock. and Wealth...what a beautiful way to end an album.

it's astounding in retrospect to hear the progression from It's My Life -> Colour Of Spring ("April 5th" and the aching b-side "It's Getting Late In The Evening") -> Spirit Of Eden. Laughing Stock is a matured sideways leap from SoE, though itself a beautiful collection that colored in my 1991/1992 seasons.

I decided to vote Spirit of Eden

after listening to them both

'Spirit of Eden' has always been just a step above 'Laughing Stock' for me. It was the first one I heard, but I think it's the combination of the one-two-three opening salvo and just having my favorite tracks overall--it's the one that sticks in memory more.

I think I must be about the only person who rates Mark Hollis' 'Mark Hollis' on par with at least 'Laughing Stock'. Occasionally the other two can even seem slightly overwrought (mainly the harmonica can sometimes miss, for me), whereas 'Mark Hollis' sometimes benefits from its all-acoustic approach.

I like SoE and LS pretty much equally, albeit for slightly different reasons. Sure there's an ILM threadcwhere I explain why.

Voted Laughing Stock, despite having heard Spirit of Eden first.

"Spirit Of Eden" is slightly more conventional, thus better. They peaked on their first two albums though.

Heard both of these aged like 7. SoE is one of my 5 or 6 favourite albums of all time, so that one, really. LS is not far behind; while the individual songs are astonishing, the album doesn't quite have the same wondrous momentum.

Yeah, pretty much agree with that

Spirit of Eden without hesitation.

(not just for happy memories of it as a great sexing album.)

'Laughing Stock' by a baw hair for me.

I heard 'Spirit' first and while it's a bit more accessible (insofar as music its level of complexity can be considered accessible) 'Laughing Stock' is pretty much the most perfectly produced album I've heard. Structurally it’s magnificently lose and open. I’ll pretty much buy any album going if someone tells me it sounds like ‘Laughing Stock’. It’s a top ten LP for me. Easy.

insofar as music its level of complexity can be considered accessible

Huh?

laughing stock. one of the most beautiful albums i can think of. spirit of eden is also fantastic obviously but with that one i can mostly tell what's going on.

Voted for Laughing Stock.

And as it's being discussed...

I first heard Spirit of Eden when I was about 15. It blew me away, completely.

Another 15 years passed before I finally felt the need to go out and buy Laughing Stock. Still not sure exactly why but I think I somehow considered Spirit of Eden "enough", or that dissapointment with Laughing Stock was inevitable. How wrong I was. It's my favourite album ever.

I have the Mark Hollis solo album (promo) somewhere, I remember very little about it.

I mean that while 'Spirit of Eden' is musically complex (i.e long song structures, an emphasis on sound texture and timbre etc) it's still something that I've found is quite accessible to people. I must've bought a dozen copies for friends, many of whom are mostly into easy to understand popular stuff, and everyone has enjoyed it.

Voted Spirit of Eden. The way I see it is a kind of gradual attenuation running from SoE through LS to Hollis' solo album, a weakening of spirit in a way as he withdrew from the world (didn't he join a monastery or something after the solo album, or is that some kind of myth)? Spirit of Eden is sonically and lyrically superior.

didn't he join a monastery or something after the solo album, or is that some kind of myth

I had a discussion about this last night, and was informed it was apocryphal. I wouldn't call it withdrawing from the world, I'd call it needing to say less to say what he wanted to say.

(LS is still sonically dense in places, such as Taphead, but the density is haunted, oblique and more horrified panic than thronging sonic smorgasbord; it is obviously still beautiful)

Think that's a myth too. I'm sure I read something online a while back by someone who claimed to be a friend of his son saying that he'd pretty much just given up with music and was living the quiet life. Nothing dramatic.

(and the last two tracks are as peaceful and final as music can be; the last of Hollis' panic has been excised in those moments of Gerard Manley Hopkins-esque (in)stress and Talk Talk's resting state can be induced)

Isn't one of the songs on the solo album about moving back to London so his kids can go to the cinema more easily?

Really? Then again, he could be singing anything at some points.

The solo album is fantastic. Remember the first time I listened to it. Think I had some friends around and I'd set the volume a little too low resulting in my thinking that the whole album was pretty much silence.

Spirit of Eden is flawless. Thus, it wins.

Westward Bound

Opaline through her hair
Born on an April tide
Glowing in the wonder of our first child
There my promise is

A spur
A rein

The world upon my back
The pressure upon this earth

Drought's heir

Sown my money
Sold my shirt
Sown my money

Migrate
Job on the threshing line
Mute I walk
Idle ground
Westward bound

Very clearly, I think you'll agree, about moving back to London so his kids can go to the cinema more easily.

SoE is more... easily listened to. But LS is more harrowing. Not that SoE is an easy listen or unharrowing, but... LS feels more painfully profound.

Spirit of Eden

Geir otm re: early Talk Talk albums

Huh -- turns out there's an official Facebook page for Talk Talk and Hollis:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Talk-Talk-Mark-Hollis/12307963901

And they're apparently taking questions for James Marsh, the guy who did all the album/single artwork.

I mean that while 'Spirit of Eden' is musically complex (i.e long song structures, an emphasis on sound texture and timbre etc) it's still something that I've found is quite accessible to people. I must've bought a dozen copies for friends, many of whom are mostly into easy to understand popular stuff, and everyone has enjoyed it.

A lot of popular music is complex

Or a lot of accessible music is complex, however you wanna phrase it

laughing stock because new grass is meandering perfection.

I recently listened to the first 3 TT albums on repeat for an evening and it was LOVELY

i always get these two mixed up but one of them has a song with a really prominent cowbell or something that mars it, so the other one.

if you are talking about 'after the flood' then i don't even

i am not talking about after the flood.

because i just put that on and it's one of my favourite tracks off either album.

oh it might be 'i believe in you'

yeah 'after the flood' is a tremendous achievement, and maybe even the best song called 'after the flood' (VdGG's one is fucking spectacular too)

i always get these two mixed up but one of them has a song with a really prominent cowbell or something that mars it, so the other one.

this is totally "Desire"

which rules

Both of these are the best record ever made. One of them I can actually play when other people are around (and often), the other I can only hear alone and every few years, but I think about its 'forms' and 'feel' every single day.

I didn't want to say "Desire" because that's possibly one of my 10 favourite songs ever written, and definitely my top TT track.

I listen to these a lot less than people would probabaly imagine. And I still get accused of talking about them too much even though I don't. I listen to John Cope a LOT, though.

I think the Rainbow triptych at the start of SoE wears me out so much so that I lose attention after I Believe In You.

yeah it was desire!

sorry guys. I can't get past the cowbell.

LS i think. hard decision.

the cowbell is awesome!

Nick, that means you lose attention for one track, and that track is BEAUTY ITSELF set to tape with the greatest fadeout in the history of fadeouts

also the verse of Desire has my favourite chord-sequence

I first listened to Spirit of Eden at a time of crisis in my life. It was the year I graduated college and my first love/first relationship ended. I was at rock bottom. Spirit of Eden was the most deeply moving and spiritually cathartic album I had ever heard.

Around the same time, I had also listened to similar albums such as Hex (Bark Psychosis) which became one of my favorite albums and is, for me, perfect late-night listening and the quintessential winter album. At this time, I listened to Laughing Stock, as well, and, although its instrumental complexities were entrancing, it simply did not speak to my emotions the way Spirit of Eden did.

Spirit of Eden is still the album I go to when I'm at my lowest and searching for my path.

It's one of my Desert Island albums, alongside
A Storm in Heaven (The Verve)
No Other (Gene Clark)
Lazer Guided Melodies (Spiritualized)

is "I Believe in You" the greatest song of ALL TIME?

...spirit...

it is yes

confirmed, thank you

love this lip-synced nod-along

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16mDl6dlfmE

there used to be a fantastic fan-made video for I Believe in You composed of shots from a really old black-and-white TV show but it's sadly gone now

is it this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIORDxFPccQ

nah the band aren't in it... I meant TV show from like the 1950s

this one's pretty cool though!

god, i always thought it was

spirit...

eden...

spirit...

didn't realize it was "how long"

xp f hazel actually that video i posted gets a little weird! there's RT footage in the middle!

uh...i don't know, sorry

talk talk rules

i have been a fan for a while, but things kicked up a gear a couple weeks ago

if RT is astroturfing with fan-made talk talk videos the state is getting really deep

just to go along with the thread, though, "after the flood" may be as good.

i love the drums. i have been playing drums a lot, throughout my life. talk talk drums are so fucking good

"new grass" drums especially, too, jfc. very good

and NOT in a technical sense, or an "unusual" sense (different time signatures). i mean, yes to those too, well done talk talk drummer(s?), but first and foremost i just mean their intuitive drive, the heart of it all. a very tasteful drummer, whoever it is. sorry if it's a session drummer, or a bill-berry-esque-legend. i don't really know. but they're great.

make sure you spend some time with the trinity of flawless b-sides... it's getting late in the evening, for what it's worth, and john cope

which ones do you mean?

treat me like a dope, i'm made out of soap

just paul harris hittin' things

ffs ruined it by merging the bassist and the drummers' names, nightmare

and now a double apostrophe fail. better put some talk talk on to recover

talk' talk'

make sure you spend some time with the trinity of flawless b-sides... it's getting late in the evening, for what it's worth, and john cope

Was listening to these just yesterday, 'For What It's Worth' in particular I really love, I think it suggests another direction they could've headed off in at that point.

Those two Colour of Spring b-sides would have been better on the album than April 5th and Chameleon Day, which are two of my least favourite songs they did. I also prefer Pictures of Bernadette to I Don't Believe in You, but that might have made the album more rock-oriented than they would have wanted.

April 5th and Chameleon Day, which are two of my least favourite songs they did.

interestingly, these are the two songs harris doesn't play on!

i will definitely be checking out the b-sides today, but holding off until night time is the right time

i immediately abandoned my plan and listened via youtube. :)

they sound really great, thanks for the recommendation. i do find it hard to approach later-era talk talk songs in isolation, though. even the songs i absolutely adore from laughing stock and spirit of eden, i need to the rest of the album to lead me up to them.

ugh, the outro on "it's getting late in the evening" is excellent. i may just start integrating this into my Colour of Spring playlist

You know, I've never really thought about it before, because the music itself is more than enough to think about, but the title "Spirit of Eden" possesses a pretty profound double meaning. On the one hand, there's the notion of capturing the pastoral innocence of paradise/Eden. On the other is the idea that we are all ghosts, spirits, haunting what used to be Eden.

or that the idea of eden haunts us, too

Yeah, all that good stuff.

for me, though, it's all about the way he says "spirit..." in I Believe In You. he doesn't actually say "eden" afterward (for a long time i thought he did), but it hangs in the air along with "spirit" because of the album title. and there's something so sad in that word, sung in that way, alone. "...spirit..."

the idea that we are all ghosts, spirits, haunting what used to be Eden.

This has always been our interpretation of it.

wtf april 5th and chameleon day are both incredible

or in the spirit of eden, where mankind fell from grace as I read it

April 5th and Chameleon Day sound to me like they are reaching for the Spirit of Eden sound without getting it yet. The former has an irritating programmed percussion part and the latter has a weird quasi-wind-quartet intro and outro that they would soon replace with acoustic instruments.

like they are reaching for the Spirit of Eden sound without getting it yet

this for me is 100 percent the appeal of colour of spring but one's mileage varies i guess

no album with 'life's what you make it' on it can ever be anything less than a great album imo

I love the transitional quality of April 5th and Chammelon Day - the band finding all that breath and space and not feeling the need to fill it.

The results of this poll will never stop amusing me. I actually voted for LS but I changed my mind last night to SoE and will change it again. I actually think MH is my not-polled answer though. Well, it was last night when I listened to all three. It changes all the time.

Both are perfect, Laughing Stock a wee bit more so.

the organ tone on laughing stock is one of music’s finest sounds

I bought these two records and Mark Hollis right when they came out, and I agree that the solo album is the best of the three. Even details like the room tone at the opening and closing are perfectly timed. The album is an unexpected mixture of warmth and austerity; I credit it with helping me though the depressive year when it was issued.

When you listen to records as many times as I have heard these, you have to be honest with yourself about what you feel is not working. I've always found Taphead and Runeii on Laughing Stock a little arid. In a way, the progression didn't become clear to me until 1998.

April 5th and Chameleon Day sound to me like they are reaching for the Spirit of Eden sound without getting it yet. The former has an irritating programmed percussion part and the latter has a weird quasi-wind-quartet intro and outro that they would soon replace with acoustic instruments.

― Halfway there but for you, Thursday, 5 November 2020 18:16 (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

wtf the programmed percussion on "April 5th" is brilliant

about 2 minutes into "The Rainbow", at the start of "Spirt of Eden" - what is that scribbling noise? is it a pen or pencil scribbling? to me it sounds like someone just scratching over something

Apparently it's Hugh Davies playing the "shozyg", an electronic instrument of his own making.

i see.

i also love how on this most holy albums of subtlety, the big drums on "Desire" include a big, conkin' cowbell. CONK CONK CONK CONK!

lol

https://i.imgur.com/fAuFMhp.png

true google pros know to use only 3 sets of quotation marks

"let the " algorithm "handle the rest