INITIALLY IGNORED IN THE UK, THE CULT BAND’S SECOND ALBUM MARKED THE FIRST SIGNS OF A SHIFTING TRAJECTORY. BUT IT STANDS UP ON ITS OWN MERITS AS A FINE SYNTH-POP RECORD.
FELIX ROWE
CLASSIC ALBUM
Throughout life, there’s often a disconnect between the perception and the reality: where you are, versus where you want to be. This uneasy tension framed the career trajectory of Talk Talk in their formative years. Long before the critical plaudits and mythologising, they were largely dismissed as apologetic synth-pop also-rans. For all the talk talk, could they walk walk? From their early output alone, frontman Mark Hollis’ frequent allusions to John Coltrane and Debussy don’t immediately ring true.
What Hollis really stood for remains a fascination today, one that’s accentuated by his later self-imposed exile from the limelight. 40 years on from 1984’s international breakthrough, It’s My Life, and some five years after his passing, the mystique surrounding him only grows more impenetrable in the void he left behind. But while it’s the later post-rock masterpieces that prompt uncontrollable gushing from A-list fans (Robert Plant to Bon Iver), there’s plenty to savour in It’s My Life.
Like so many of their contemporaries, Talk Talk were initially presented as the next Duran Duran, before turning out to be a different beast entirely. Judging by their 1982 debut, The Party’s Over, it’s not hard to see how the comparisons arose. Riding the wake of the Fab Five’s second coming, it stemmed from the same record company, and the very same producer, Colin Thurston (in the words of Duran’s John Taylor, “a major catalyst for the 80s sound”). Cue soaring choruses laced with melodrama, bright synths and driving rock drums. Oh – and crisp white suits.
The likeness was not incidental, but carefully choreographed by EMI’s A&R machine, even if the young group might claim not to have got the memo. “I get depressed about the whole thing,” Hollis told Noise!. He may have had other plans, but the only element marking out Talk Talk’s arty intentions at this point (besides the snarky, anti-glam title) was the kooky sleeve by James Marsh. The antithesis of the Duran debut’s smouldering fashion shoot cover art, it opted for a whimsical painting owing more to surrealists Max Ernst and Salvador Dali.
A DESIGN FOR LIFE
Talk Talk’s second LP, It’s My Life, marks the first palpable shift in their musical trajectory. While ultimately a conventional pop record, again prepared under the watch
