Monocled Alchemist

Adrian Thrills shouts the praise of a brand new pop band | published in NME, 16/01/82

Talk Talk | Yakkety Yak don’t talk back | DEEP IN THE homely heart of rural England, something rather strange is stirring: inside a quaint sandstone studio in the middle of arctic Oxfordshire, a gang of five are working long and hard into the early hours.

Talk Talk are busy recording their first album with producer Colin Thurston, a tight and intelligent team striding with stealthy confidence towards the new year’s first new pop masterstroke.

The chances are that you have yet to hear Talk Talk. The likelihood is that you soon will. The southern quartet are already talking in terms of when rather than if their debut EMI single “Mirrorman” is a hit, already preparing to take their place on Top Of The Pops alongside Madness and Mode, Haircut and the Human League at the sharper end of a constantly-shifting pop stage.

As a young group with no track record and no obvious tags of trimmings, the band are vague and evasive about what if anything, they represent. For the moment, their music speaks for itself.

Talk Talk produce credible pop that respects the Anglo-American traditions of the ’60s while simultaneously reaching out to embrace a mood and mode that belongs nowhere but 1982. It floats somewhere between a jazzier Teardrop and the deft adroitness of The Cure before they grew cynical and pretentious. It is catchy and instant, but not without its darker side; a gothic, almost celestial majesty.

Talk Talk are Paul Webb, Lee Harris, Simon Brenner and Mark Hollis — bass, drums, keyboards and vocals — a guitar-less line-up that is well suited to the compact melodic grace of their material.

Breaking momentarily from their recording duties, Mark and Paul relax against the cork-carpeted walls of Chipping Norton studios and Talk Talk talk.

Mark: “The whole thing about this band not having any guitarist is to get the melodies across with more force. You’ve got a rhythm section to provide the beat and keyboards to provide the melody, which they can do much better than a guitar. In a way, the line-up is closer to a jazz quartet than a rock band.

“It allows us to put more emphasis on our songs. A lot of the stuff around at the moment relies too heavily on the arrangement and the production rather than the song. But those aren’t songs. They’re just arrangements with a couple of trimmings. I like bands like The Police who just keep it simple — a good, strong rhythm section with the melody coming from the vocals.”

Talk Talk | Yakkety Yak don’t talk back

MARK IS THE younger brother of Ed Hollis, the former Eddie And The Hot Rods manager -producer – songwriter, a family contact that was useful when he began his own songwriting career. Last summer Ed took a rough tape of Mark’s songs into Island Music, the publishing division of Island Records, who were impressed enough to arrange some proper studio time. The aspiring young session players recruited for the task soon grew into a full-time band and Talk Talk were born.

Mark: “When we went in to do those demos, we had no intention of actually forming a band. I thought of it primarily as a publishing thing, but after only a couple of days, it was obviously going to work as a group. It was a real band after the first week. It’s not something that was thrown together by some management company.”

On the strength of that demo tape and a short series of live dates at the Blitz, Legends and Embassy in London in the autumn, Talk Talk signed to EMI in November. The only curious aspect was the noticeable absence of the customary press wind-up. Keith Aspden, meanwhile, had left Island Music to become the band’s manager and they started December on an extensive nationwide tour with Duran Duran.

From deceptively low-key beginnings, things were starting to happen rather quickly for Talk Talk.

Paul: “We didn’t want to be over-exposed before we had signed a deal, so we kept things pretty quiet during the summer. Before the Duran Duran tour, we’d played only six live dates! But if you spend months and months slogging your way around the clubs in London, you can make yourself available too to the A&R men. They don’t bother to come and see you ‘cos they know that they can always catch you somewhere else.”

While Mark and Simon are both from north London, the rhythm twins Paul and Lee are a product of the same Essex club scene that spawned Depeche Mode and the less illustrious if more bizarre Naked Lunch. The pair were lured by the dance-sense and dash of clubs like the fabled Goldmine in Canvey Island and Crocks in Raleigh rather than the grease and sweat of their native Southend’s traditional R&B scene.

Talk Talk | Yakkety Yak don’t talk back

Paul: “In Southend, there is this really strong real musicians clique, where you have to be technically brilliant. We never got off on that. We were always more interested in going out and having a good time than hanging out with musicians who were just interested in showing off their skills.

“The fashion thing is important too, but there are not many people in Southend who are really into that, apart from the people in the club scene. There is the old R&B thing, which we never wanted anything to do with, although people still tend to lumber you with an R&B tag when they see that you come from Southend.”

WITH THEIR first release in the EMI pipeline, Talk Talk are fast becoming aware of the importance of packaging and presentation, although with their artwork by Peter Saville and their clothes lying somewhere between Anthony Price and A. Rebours, they are in danger of being seen as one massive modern marketing cliche, going for the trendy names just for the sake of it.

Paul: “The thing is that these people are good. We had contacted Peter Saville before we signed with EMI and he saw us onstage before he was commissioned to work for us. It wasn’t just a case of going for the names. Those people are there because they are the best and I don’t see the point of going elsewhere just for the sake of it.”

The same could be true of producer Thurston, who first made his name as the engineer on Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ and has since worked with Magazine and Duran Duran. He could well be to 1982 what Hannett and Lillywhite were to 1980 and Rushent and Burgess to 1981 — one of the most influential producers of the year.

Talk Talk | Yakkety Yak don’t talk back

Mark: “Again, it’s not a case of just going for the name. If the geezer can’t deliver the goods, then he isn’t worth it. Most of the ideas are still mainly ours. We still tell Colin what we want to be put over . . . ”

Which is?

Paul: “We want the sound to be quite moody and atmospheric. The same goes for the artwork. The stuff that Saville is doing for us isn’t in the least like the classical sleeves that he has done before.”

Are they worried about placing undue emphasis on the package at the expense of its contents?

“No . . . because it is important. You can represent yourself visually through music and clothes just as well as you can represent yourself musically. I mean, Peter Saville helped put over the mood of Joy Division with his artwork, just as he did with Orchestral Manouevres. The packaging was part of them, an extension of the band.”

As the main songwriter in Talk Talk, Mark emphasises the strength of the songs. In addition to the “Mirrorman” single, he has assembled a strong and original set — ‘Talk Talk’, ‘Strike Up The Band’, ‘It’s So Serious’, ‘Magic Moments’, ‘Renee’ and ‘Candy’ — with the reflective, almost transcendental edge to his writing neatly balancing the pop punch of the band.

Mark: “I don’t think of songwriting as just pure inspiration, just something that comes to you in a blinding flash. But it isn’t. You might get the germ of an idea like that, but you can sometimes try a hundred different ways of putting it into words and still come up with nothing.

“I heard Anthony Burgess talking about his writing recently and he was saying that he can spend six hours writing thousands of words and then throw almost all of them away. It’s the same with songwriting. It’s worth it for the stuff you’re left with at the end.

“The last thing in the world I would want to be thought of is as a disposable group. I want to write stuff that you’ll still be able to listen to in ten years time . . . still think of as a good song then.”

Listen listen . . . and wait.