Founded in 1981, British band Talk Talk achieved moderate success with their first two albums. The music on the albums The Party’s Over (1982) and It’s My Life (1984) could be classified mainly as synthpop, and comparisons could be made with the music of Japan and Duran Duran, for example. However, the band’s frontman, vocalist/keyboardist Mark Hollis (1955-2019), had higher ambitions. He wanted to create lasting art rather than chart pop.
For some time, Hollis had been listening almost exclusively to art music and jazz. Unlike Talk Talk’s previous albums, Hollis’s favorite records did not feature synthesizers or drum machines, and he desperately wanted to get rid of those gadgets. Hollis even declared that he had only used synthesizers for financial reasons and that, musically speaking, it would have been better if such contraptions had never been invented.
As the band’s first two albums had raised Talk Talk’s profile, they were able to make their third album with a larger budget than before. This gave Hollis the opportunity to make more ambitious music with a richer instrumental palette. Talk Talk had already been supported by several studio musicians on It’s My Life, but now the number of outside musicians increased significantly. The Colour Of Spring features 13 studio musicians and two choirs. The role of these reinforcements grew so large that drummer Lee Harris and bassist Paul Webb were somewhat overshadowed; there are a few tracks on the album where neither of the rhythm section plays at all!
It’s My Life producer Tim Friese-Greene, on the other hand, becomes an even more important collaborator on The Color Of Spring, with all of the songs on the album written jointly by Hollis and Friese-Greene. Friese-Greene also plays piano, organ, and Mellotron (and even synthesizers on a few tracks) throughout the album, and it could be said that at this point he became an unofficial member of Talk Talk.
The first song, with its ticking electronic percussion, is most similar to the soundscapes of the two previous albums. ”Happiness Is Easy” is a playfully pulsating song, but Hollis’ sarcastic lyrics give it a dark undertone. The song itself is simple, but the arrangement is meticulous and rich. It is colored by, among other things, a solo played on a Variophone (an electronic wind instrument) and Danny Thompson’s tastefully popping double bass. The song is playfully crowned by a children’s choir singing alongside Hollis. An untrained choir consisting of ordinary schoolchildren has been used memorably in rock music before, and Talk Talk’s application of the concept is on a par with similar experiments by Mike Oldfield (”On Horseback”) and Pink Floyd (”Another Brick In The Wall Part 2”).
The melancholic yet emphatic ”I Don’t Believe In You” showcases Hollis’s magnificent singing voice. Hollis’s soulful voice is at its best in this song. Hollis’s slightly nasal baritone voice stylistically falls somewhere between Scott Walker, Peter Gabriel, and David Sylvian. His voice blends Sylvian’s luxurious softness, Walker’s crooner-like swagger, and Gabriel’s rough drama into a sufficiently original combination. This stylish song, based on a simple chord pattern, gets an extra boost from Robbie McIntosh’s slightly rough electric guitar riffs.
The third song, ”Life’s What You Make It,” grooves along somewhat mechanically on a rolling piano riff, and David Rhodes’s (Talk Talk also borrowed percussionist Morris Pert from Gabriel) six-note electric guitar riff, repeated here and there, serves effectively as a punctuation mark. Overall, the song is a bit repetitive and not the most interesting track on the album.
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The next song, on the other hand, is very interesting, both musically and in terms of Talk Talk’s future. The delicate and minimalist ”April 5th” is the first of the two songs on the album that most clearly foreshadow the future. Its instrumentation is built on Hollis’s lightly humming Hammond organ, Friese-Green’s impressionistic piano, and a simply jangling percussion track. Here and there, David Roach’s lyrical soprano saxophone and McIntosh’s vigorous dobro playing add a little embellishment to the simple and almost solemn-sounding music. Both are heard so sporadically and rarely that whenever they appear, the effect is extremely powerful. Hollis’s wandering and meandering vocal performance is also impressive.
”April 5th” is also a good example of how Talk Talk was not your typical band; apart from Hollis, no other band members play on the track! This kind of flexibility allows for varied arrangements. Not every song has to have bass guitar and drums just because the band members want to play their instruments. I don’t know how happy Harris and Webb were with this approach, though…
The lively ”Living In Another World,” which kicks off side B of the album, was written right at the end of the recording sessions when the record company announced that the album was missing a hit song. Hollis and Friese-Greene took up the challenge and wrote a song that became the biggest hit on the album.
”Living In Another World” is carried by a simple drum beat, with Steve Winwood’s organ (Winwood also plays on two other tracks) humming and buzzing effectively in the background, but mixed quite far back. The song has a bit of the spirit of Winwood’s old band, Traffic.
For me, however, the highlight of the song is Mark Feltham’s harmonica. Feltham’s harmonica plays effectively in the choruses and hums more quietly in the background of the verses. I’m not generally a big fan of this instrument, but Feltham’s playing often has a magical quality, and this is no exception. Towards the end of the song, he plays a tasty solo that sounds like it would have worked just as well on an electric guitar. However, the end result is much more original when played on the harmonica.
The third-to-last song, “Give It Up,” features pleasant melodic bass playing from Webb and impressive Hammond organ playing from Friese-Green. Rhodes’ electric guitar also growls satisfyingly a few times. Hollis’ vocal performance is once again impressive. As a song, however, ”Give It Up” is somewhat bland and overly long, even though the execution itself is effective.
”Chameleon Day” foreshadows Talk Talk’s future even more strongly than ”April 5th.” It is a very abstract, wandering song in which we hear mainly impressionistic piano and Hollis’s voice, which he uses very dynamically. At times, Hollis whispers his vocals, and at other times he literally roars powerfully. It is an interesting experiment that is not particularly strong as a single song, but works well as a little treat among the more energetic material.
The album concludes with its most grandiose arrangement and, at eight minutes, its longest track. “Time It’s Time” begins with a soft, almost pastoral-sounding with soft drum track in the background. With the first chorus, the song grows as a choir begins to sing insistently in the background. This time, instead of schoolchildren, it is a real trained choir called the Ambrosian Singers. Webb’s crisp, melodic bass line is once again a pleasure to hear.
“Time It’s Time” is also an example of Talk Talk’s open-minded approach to combining elements that at first glance seem incompatible; it is rare to hear choral singing borrowed from modern art music combined with a solo harmonica.
Read also
- Review: Talk Talk – The Colour Of Spring (1986)
- Levyarvio: Jeff Wayne – Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version Of The War Of The Worlds (1978)
- Review: Gong – Shamal (1976)
- Review: Genesis – A Trick Of The Tail (1976)
- Review: Rush – Moving Pictures (1981)
- Review: Pavlov’s Dog – At The Sound Of The Bell (1976)
- Levyarvio: Pavlov’s Dog – At The Sound Of The Bell (1976)
- Levyarvio: Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven (2000)
- Year by Year: Best Albums of 1975 – 1-10
The Colour Of Spring became the band’s most successful album. Not by a huge margin compared to its predecessors, but it is nevertheless gratifying to see that moving in an increasingly ambitious direction is not necessarily commercial suicide for musicians. Talk Talk did experience a collapse in sales with their subsequent albums, as the band continued in a considerably more challenging direction.
The Colour Of Spring is an excellent transitional album on which Talk Talk still has one foot partly in the pop style of their early albums, but is already taking a firm step towards the groundbreaking avant-garde post-rock style of their subsequent albums.
Best tracks: Happiness Is Easy, ”April 5th”, ”Living In The Another World”, ”Time It’s Time”
Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI
Read also: Review: David Sylvian – Brilliant Trees (1984)
Tracks
- ”Happiness Is Easy” 6:30
- ”I Don’t Believe in You” 5:02
- ”Life’s What You Make It” 4:29
- ”April 5th” 5:51
- ”Living in Another World” 6:58
- ”Give It Up” 5:17
- ”Chameleon Day” 3:20
- ”Time It’s Time” 8:14
Talk Talk
Mark Hollis: vocals, piano (3, 5, 6, 7), Variophon (1, 4, 7), organ (4), Mellotron (6), electric guitar (8), melodica (8) Lee Harris: drums (all except 4, 7) Paul Webb: bass guitar (2, 4, 5, 6, 8), backing vocals (3, 5)
Other musicians
Tim Friese-Greene: piano (1, 2, 8), Kurzweil synthesizer (1, 4, 7), organ (3, 6, 8), Variophon (4, 7), Mellotron (3) Ian Curnow: synthesizer solos (2, 6) Martin Ditcham: percussion (1, 3, 5, 6, 8) Mark Feltham: harmonica (5) Alan Gorrie: bass guitar (1) Robbie McIntosh: guitar (1, 2, 5, 8), dobro (4, 6) Morris Pert: percussion (1, 2, 5, 8) Phil Reis: percussion (1) David Rhodes: guitar (3, 5, 6) David Roach: soprano saxophone (2, 4, 5) Gaynor Sadler: harp (2) Danny Thompson: double bass (1) Children of Miss Speaker’s School: children’s choir (1) Ambrosian Singers: choir (8) Steve Winwood: organ (1, 2, 5)
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