Stranded: Talk Talk- Spirit of Eden

Nick Southall

The eddies of influence flow outwards in concentric circles from Spirit Of Eden, artists at different compass points echoing its ripples, unknowingly swept in its tides. The overt appropriation of aesthetic by Bark Psychosis. Jason Pierce’s godless drone and surge. A learning curve abided by Radiohead. Sigur Ros; Elbow; Ride; all and more in thrall. But Spirit Of Eden itself is oblivious, standing outside of time and consideration, a deeply personal music made for deeply personal reasons, not to influence few but to satisfy one. Enduring a great burden of coercive influence from EMI, Mark Hollis consented to allow them to edit “I Believe In You” for radio. A mistake. Distraught and prostituted; perhaps the record’s most transcendent moment shorn of context and arc; Hollis despaired, protective of his creation, his expression, a part of himself. Within the framework of the album, “I Believe In You” is an instant of sublime; wraiths of guitar, gentle folds of piano, a click and thump of drums as herald for an anguished cry; “I just can’t bring myself to see it starting”. The magnetic, liquid groove, observance of a broken world, the sea of organs, a curtain of sound and’ a chorus, angels, light’ a dream of noise’


“Create upon my breath / create reflection on my flesh / the wealth of love” / take my freedom’’ “Wealth” is the album’s final and most explicitly devout movement, an overt and honest supplication. A caress of organ, a fractured, delicate brush of acoustic guitar. Pace, as throughout the record, is key; the slower the motion the more important the progression, a momentum of spirit. “Wealth” is a lingering plea for gospel, a bargaining with God; “take my freedom for giving me a sacred love.” In my eyes it is an admission of man’s inability to guide his destiny, a divulgence of impotence and a desperate appeal for fate in the face of free will. It is recognition and refutation of our solitude in the absence of God. If we pray hard enough and long enough and pure enough, perhaps we can create God, make God hear us, love us, and bless us with salvation. It is a weak but gracious yearning, futile and human.


These are just my thoughts as I stand now. My love affair with this beautiful and vatic record is fresh, and like all youthful suitors I will tend to idolise and revere the object of my passion, to read too much into its gestures and motions, to ignore the world outside for a while; and yet I know that there are still many things to be found within the minutes of this record, in its antecedents and heirs, its sources and resonances. I am barely yet acquainted with Laughing Stock. To steal for a moment; the rigorous succession of circumstances. This table, this bubble of light humming with music. This is where I start.


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