I think there are bands where a definite Talk Talk presence can be seen: although they're quite a different band, the use of extensive improvisation and editing to craft songs and the use of jazz rhythms in rock music has a definite influence on Tortoise for one - and there's a definite Talk Talk feel to In Rainbows as well (I'm thinking Reckoner in particular here, which also happenes to be my favourite track on it!).

I do agree though that there's not been many albums with quite the same scale or ambition though. I do think a large part of that though is down to the fact that while Talk Talk had become (to be polite about it) a somewhat more 'niche' concern, they still had enough money from the It's My Life/Colour of Spring days to be able to finance the numerous sessionists and months and months of studio time. Very few bands get to a position where that would be possible, and very few of those would make the most of it in the way that Talk Talk did.

I don't think even Spirit Of Eden comes close, to be honest.

I've never got into Talk Talk's later stuff, I like all the songs that get played on Real Radio. It's like when people praise The Human League for being pioneers of post punk - their best song is clearly "Don't You Want Me".

that threads about At The Drive-In and Animal Collective and other such bullshit rack up dozens and dozens of posts on DiS but a thread about one of the greatest albums ever recorded has - what? - 8 posters.

*shakes head sadly*

Colour of Spring and Spirit of Eden are both better albums.

It's the perfect fusion of their pop beginnings and the experimentalism of their later years. 'Laughing Stock' runs it very close. I always thought 'Spirit' was ever so slightly overrated.

I don't think I could ever get bored of it.

New Grass is especially sublime.

I don't think there's a great deal of difference between LS & SOE WRT to the individual songs, it's more that the production on the latter sounds slightly dated (and doesn't really highlight the dynamics of the piece terribly well).

I think the fact that LS have remained so singular is more to do with a paucity of influence than talent. I've listened to it countless numbers of times and still can't understand why the particular combination of notes, timbres, rhythms, moods etc works the way it does, whereas usually this kind of thing is pretty obvious. It's completely outside of the emotional touchstones that drive everything else. Viewed independently of the song & with respect to one another, the various elements seem so incredibly discordant and so antithetical to the traditional nature of composition that I can't help but attribute it to some indefinable quality that, though the term is so obnoxiously thrown about most of the time, must be genius (!!!)

Talk Talk didn't have a million pounds lying around when they recorded LS; they'd been dropped and sued by EMI for, in SoE, producing an 'unsellable' record. For LS they were signed to Verve / Polydor and as such would definitely have been treated as a minor concern in terms of finance, having essentially been realised at this point as a marginal-interest experimental jazz group.

But anyway...

I think I love CoS, SoE and LS pretty equally (the Mark Hollis solo record I like a lot but have never been as throughly punched-out by as I have the others), but for different reasons; CoS is masterful, mature, experimental pop music, SoE is an awesome, visceral weird experimental rock/jazz/pop journey, and LS is some kind of... spiritual voyage. It's the only record I've heard that I think of as being ACTUALLY profound, I think.

As far as influence goes, there's a bit of a revival of Talk Talk going on; this year Bon Iver, Shearwater and Weezer have all done cover (the former pair of SoE tracks), Elbow have found possibly their most commercial success this year and have always been massive TT fans, plus the new albums by Shearwater and The Notwist have both, in very different ways, got big streams of Talk Talk influence running through them.

I'd just like to express that, while Talk Talk are probably my favourite band ever, I do also like At The Drive-In, and seeing them live at Camden Empress Ballroom in 2000 was one of the best gigs I've ever been to. Although Relationship Of Command is nowhere near as good as Vaya or In/Casino/Out.

Is absolutely sublime. One of the most beautiful albums ever.

*runs away*

How to do justice to this record? It will never reach the audience it deserves. It's too beautiful, painful and timeless. It's sublime. It just moves me.

It’s also difficult. It may be my favourite musical experience, but it’s not my most frequent one. I cannot play this album on a whim, I cannot play it when my life is too painful. Sometimes it’s too difficult to approach.

Why is it so wonderful? It’s a more coherent, thematic, album than SoE, if less ‘immediate’. I find both albums a visceral experience, but LS more so. SoE has elements of hope, but LS is totally concerned with despair.

If it’s despairing, it’s the sparse, individual, self-inflicted despair of a man who has played cards with life and “dealt my hell”.

“Shake my head / Turn my face to the floor /Dead to respect”

On New Grass, a song that can move me to tears, Hollis sings of being “versed in Christ should strength desert me”. Does any line better express hopelessness at human weakness and an acknowledgement that consolation might have to be grasped in rote and ritual? The lyrics are explicitly religious, and the entire experience may be spiritual, but it’s a man raging at an empty universe.

And that voice.

Arghhhhhh. I going to shut up about this now, as I may be getting too much ‘rock muso’. As I said at the start, I can’t do this record justice, but if I can persuade just someone to listen….

this would be about Grandaddy