Talk Talk
The Colour of Spring

Talk Talk scare me. In the sense that I can't fathom how they managed to reach the "peaks" of success, at least in Europe, with a handful of brilliantly intelligent synth-pop singles, very catchy but also creepy, and then gradually shifted towards a form of sophisticated ambient music, which actually laid the groundwork for post-rock, a timeless genre that, yes, is associated with the '90s, but actually feels like something retro, recalling a specific past (jazz influences), but at the same time undefined. Furthermore, and above all, I can't understand the figure behind Talk Talk, the Mind: Mark Hollis. What a mysterious fellow! When he performed on stage, shaking his head and making his blonde hair sway, to those close by, he must have seemed like someone who read all the philosophical books and all the love guides, only to indulge in embarrassing advances, being too anachronistic, too 19th century: in a word, inadequate. And that voice!

Romantic and gothic seem to immerse in the same solution. How can you not shiver listening to a "It’s My Life" or the much more iconic and heavily sung-along, distorted "Such a Shame" (with lyrics inspired by "The Dice Man" by Luke Rhinehart, the pseudonym of a rather eccentric writer)? And if that synth-pop, with its decadent shades, becomes even more rarefied, and matures through a more convinced turn to jazz, in a classical, retro key – as the trip-hop pioneers, Portishead, would do – what emerges? An album like "The Colour of Spring", a bridge between two brief eras.
I don't think I can speak of such a fragile and at the same time vigorous, brazen creature. I can only say that when "Living in Another World" starts, but most of all, when there's that change in tempo, in the same song, between verse and chorus, I'm no longer on Earth, and my feet, although touching the ground, no longer matter. I am already flying. And I cry, too. I don't want to dwell too much on the other tracks. Just consider that "The Colour of Spring" is a continuous flow of Beauty, of the Sublime: each track has something in common with the previous one, but takes on the semblance of a different pain. An escalation. At times the sound may seem pompous, Hollis's voice might sound caricatural, but in reality, it is as sincere as music can be expressed. After all, it only takes a "priest whose word should be heeded" to believe that "happiness" is "easy". Not only! "Life is what you make of it". Someone like Hollis could afford skepticism, irony. So much better to encounter the pomp of someone like him in these times, compared to that of a preacher. But now he's gone. Mark Hollis is no more. He dissolved into nothingness, leaving the scene to be more present with his family (his own declaration) – a noble thing, of course! – but leaving an irreparable void in those who laugh nervously, to hold back tears, at the thought that indeed "happiness is easy" but that "only the angels know where to tread".

This fear I have of Talk Talk is rather a awareness of being, like many others, destined to disappear, because there are no answers, except the simplest ones, those of a life lived, far from myth, away from the lights of a stage. And maybe shaking your head in everyday life, arm in arm with your wife or your little child, makes more sense, compared to living torn between tears and laughter, like a clown who forgot his nose, and only realized it when he went on stage, for the performance.