Sasha gave me this fantastic Talk Talk CD today, called Laughing Stock, released in 1991. This is really a beautiful and underappreciated disc. It has lyrics but might as well be an instrumental disc, very relaxed, but loaded with texture. This is the kind of CD I hear one time and just know that I’ll be listening to for a while. (prior to this, it was Neil Finn’s Try Whistling This)

I own Talk Talk’s Natural History greatest hits CD, but Laughing Stock is entirely different. No pop hits on this one, just straight up vibe. The songs are odd and eerie but beautiful. I’m reminded of Radiohead because of the arrangement and musical experimentation on this disc, and of Doves because they’re willing to take you over the edge and then reel you back in. But you can tell that Talk Talk is something different, that the members combine to form an unmistakable style. I like it when a disc is heavily layered in the sonic space but the micro scale is left intact (you can still tell which pieces make it all work, isolate the individual musicians, and so on).

Anyway, after rereading the previous paragraph, I’ve realized that music reviews are bullshit when discussing the music alone. I don’t know the people story behind Talk Talk, and there are only so many adjectives that describe a sound—so isn’t it sort of futile? In citing people—influences rather than my sonic perception—I could point vaguely to “jazz” and Brian Eno and perhaps Pink Floyd’s DSotM, but I’d say this only to serve your understanding of how it sounds, when you should really just listen for yourself and get whatever it is you get out of it.