The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Talk Talk · produced by Tim Friese-Greene · EMI · eight tracks, about 45 minutes
Mode
Art pop with the synthesisers taken out; organ, piano, guitars, harmonica, double bass and choir, with soul and gospel at the edges
Mythos
Spring after winter, innocence handed on and doubted, a self that changes colour to survive: patterns evoked by season and title
Phase
Eight tracks on two sides, each opening long and falling quiet before its close; from a doubted lesson sung by children to a long choral release
Presentation
Album; eight tracks on two sides, about forty-five minutes
Register
A cracked, soaring tenor from whisper to tear; a children’s choir and a full one; space left between the players
Scale
One consciousness longing for renewal, with childhood, a season and the received wisdom of its world around it
Governing Proposition
A synthesiser pop band sets aside its machines for organ, piano, guitars, harmonica and choirs, and writes eight long songs against the comforts it was taught: happiness as a lesson for children, the maxim that a life is what you make it. Renewal, the record holds, is not made but waited for, in stillness, and it ends by waiting for it at length.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens slowly. A patient groove is laid down and left to run before the voice arrives, and the voice, when it comes, plainly does not believe the title it sings. Then a children’s choir enters with the same lesson, and the song opens upward: a lift that is also an irony. Contentment is taught to those who cannot yet question it, by a singer who already has. The record’s question is set in its first six minutes: innocence handed down, and found wanting.
The Colour of Spring is Talk Talk’s third studio album, issued by EMI in February 1986 as eight tracks on two sides. It was produced by Tim Friese-Greene, and its songs are by Mark Hollis and Friese-Greene. The band was Hollis, the bassist Paul Webb and the drummer Lee Harris, with Friese-Greene on keyboards and many guest players around them: organ, piano, guitars, double bass, harmonica, and choirs on the first and last tracks. The synthesisers that had carried the band’s earlier records are nearly gone.
The architecture is two sides of four, about forty-five minutes in all, and nearly three quarters of the running time lies in songs over five minutes: long forms for a pop record of 1986. Each side opens with one of its longest pieces, and on each the quietest piece, April 5th on the first and Chameleon Day on the second, stands just before the close. The record ends on its longest song. It moves from a doubted lesson sung by children to a long choral release, and the passage it traces is the one its title names, from winter into spring.
Movement II
The third song sings a self-help maxim over a piano figure so hard and repetitive that the slogan sounds like a sentence served. Drums and piano insist, and the insistence is the argument: the comfort on offer is a rule, and the rule does not save. It is the record’s hardest surface and its plainest pop song, and it is the same claim as Happiness Is Easy put the other way, a lesson received and heard to be hollow.
What the record discloses can be stated, roughly: received comforts are hollow, and renewal, if it comes, comes as something closer to grace, waited for in stillness rather than made. Disclosure through sound is credited as fully as through words, and much of this one is in the sound, in the rigid piano here and in the rests of the quieter pieces. The limit is in what is disclosed. The meaning is felt more than articulated; the words are oblique and half heard; the condition is a mood of longing more than a truth that can be argued, and what can be stated lies near devotional commonplace.
The song also shows where the making gives ground. Its drum and piano sound is rigid, rightly for the argument and audibly of its decade, and with I Don’t Believe in You and Give It Up it is one of three songs that work as conventional singles, where the form holds its content rather than enacts it. These are the record’s soft places. I Don’t Believe in You, the one song of a couple, is well made and nearer the band’s earlier song form, less required by the record’s argument than the pieces around it.
Movement III
Side one closes on a spring morning made almost wholly of rests. Organ, soft percussion and a voice singing at the edge of hearing; long spaces between the sounds, and nothing hurried. The date is a day of awakening, and the piece holds it in near-silence. It is a hush close to suspension, beauty reached by restraint, and it is the side’s hinge: without it, the first side would be three songs.
Here the record’s knowledge is plainest, and it is waiting. The slow entrances of Happiness Is Easy, the space left in every arrangement, the long forms that hold back their release: played fast and full, the same songs would state the same longing and would not make the listener wait for renewal as the record does. April 5th is that method at its purest, a piece that consists of the waiting itself. The use of silence is a craft of its own here, read to the same anchors as any other.
The season is the record’s governing image: spring as renewal after a winter, a date of awakening, a release at the end. Against it stands innocence spoiled, and on the second side the chameleon, a self that changes colour to survive. These are old patterns, and the record arranges itself along them. But there is no person on the record, no place and no story; the season is atmosphere, the archetype is reached by mood and title, and the particular is thin. The myth is evoked well and stays general.
Movement IV
The second side opens at full stretch. Harmonica and organ drive a chorus that keeps climbing, and Mark Hollis’s voice, a cracked, soaring tenor that could whisper a side earlier, tears at the top of its range. This is the record’s centre of force, the one place where its longing is shouted rather than held. Lee Harris’s drumming, exact and patient throughout the record, and Paul Webb’s melodic, sparing bass carry it, and the large cast of players is placed so that each is heard for what it does and then withdrawn.
The inheritance was the band’s own: the synthesiser pop of the early 1980s, with It’s My Life (1984) the immediate precedent, and the British new pop around it. The turn is large within the band. The synthesisers give way to organ, piano, guitars, double bass, harmonica and choir; the songs lengthen, slow and open into space; and the band made the turn with a hit-making contract and a commercial manner to lose, at the height of synthesiser pop. The stake was real. The path was not new: organic art pop in long forms was a known British road, travelled by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush.
So the force is real and moderate. The record showed that space, organic instruments and long forms could be carried inside the pop mainstream at a moment when the decade’s production ran the other way, and it reorganised Talk Talk more than it reorganised the field. Its influence on later music, on what came to be called post-rock and on British art rock of the 1990s, runs mainly through the two records after it, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, which took the larger swerve; this record is scored on its own. Give It Up, which follows, returns to the band’s earlier pop manners, and the record’s law holds there by lyric and timbre more than by form.
Movement V
Chameleon Day looks removable and is not. A voice and sparse keyboard, almost nothing, it clears the air so that the last song can begin from silence. Time It’s Time then builds for minutes over a steady groove, withholding its full sound, until a choir and the full band carry it to a release that feels earned over the whole record and not merely over its eight minutes. The record’s two choirs frame it as doubt and answer: the children’s lesson at the start, the full release at the end. Renewal is waited for, not made.
One law governs the record: longing for renewal, carried by space and patience, set against comforts that are taught and do not hold. Its range is wider than it first sounds, from pop single and soul-inflected rock to pastoral, hymn and something near gospel, and nothing breaks the law; two songs strain it. The record has survived whole and stayed in print, and its fabric, organ, piano, acoustic instruments and choir in place of the synthesisers and gated drums of 1986, has kept it largely out of its decade. Its presence is narrower than its age would lead one to expect, kept partly by Life’s What You Make It in broadcast and partly by the band’s later records.
What it holds is a small world, closely. Consciousness as longing, doubt and something near prayer; childhood, in the choir and the lesson; the natural order, in a season and a date; a couple, once; the social world only as received wisdom held at a distance; the sacred approached in this last song without a theology. Labour, the state, history and place are absent. Much of the attention the record now receives reaches it through Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, and its words yield little more on return than on first hearing. Its sound goes on yielding, and the long release at its close is what the record has been waiting for since its first bars.
Act III · The Twelve
Eight tracks in about forty-five minutes, and most pass the subtractive test. Happiness Is Easy must open: its children’s choir and slow, patient groove set the record’s question, innocence handed down and found wanting. April 5th is the stillest piece on side one and its hinge, a spring morning held in near-silence; without it the side would be three songs. Living in Another World is the record’s centre of force, and Time It’s Time its compelled end. Chameleon Day looks removable and is not: almost nothing, a voice and sparse keyboard, it clears the air so that the close can begin from silence. The test bites at I Don’t Believe in You and Give It Up, well made and nearer the band’s earlier song form.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: received comforts are hollow, and renewal, if it comes, comes as something closer to grace, waited for in stillness rather than made. Happiness Is Easy sets a children’s choir against a voice that plainly does not believe the title; Life’s What You Make It sings a self-help maxim over a piano figure so hard and repetitive that the slogan sounds like a sentence served. Disclosure through sound is credited fully: April 5th and Chameleon Day make waiting audible, and Time It’s Time turns it to release. What holds the figure: the meaning is felt more than articulated, the words are oblique and half heard, the condition is a mood of longing more than a stated truth, and what can be stated lies near devotional commonplace.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Elevation is frequent and mostly warm. Happiness Is Easy rises slowly and opens when the children’s voices come in, a lift that is also an irony. April 5th is a hush close to suspension, organ, soft percussion and a voice at the edge of hearing: beauty by restraint. Living in Another World is the record’s force at full stretch, harmonica and organ driving a chorus that keeps climbing, the voice raw at the top. Time It’s Time is the summit, a long build over a steady groove until a choir and the full band carry it to a release earned over the whole record. Life’s What You Make It has drive more than height, and two songs stay mostly level. Five of eight pieces rise, two very high, by patience rather than spectacle.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Myth is evoked, not built. The governing image is the season of the title: spring as renewal after winter, April 5th as a date of awakening, Time It’s Time as the moment of release. Against it stands innocence handed on and spoiled, the children’s choir singing a lesson the adult voice doubts; and the chameleon of Chameleon Day is an old figure, a self that changes colour to survive. The record arranges itself along these patterns, from the doubted lesson at its start to the release at its end. What holds the axis is that no figure carries them: there is no person, no place and no story, the seasons are atmosphere, and the archetype is reached by mood and title. Evoked well, and that is what the axis credits.
Score: 7.4 / 10
The inheritance is the band’s own synthesiser pop of the early 1980s, with It’s My Life (1984) the immediate precedent. The turn is large within the band: the synthesisers are nearly gone, replaced by organ, piano, guitars, double bass, harmonica, choir and many guest players; the songs lengthen, slow and open into space, and the silence between sounds becomes part of the arrangement. The stake was real: a band with a hit-making contract turned from the sound that had made it, at the height of synthesiser pop. What holds the figure is the path. Organic art pop in long forms was a known British road, travelled by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush, the record kept songs in single form, and the larger swerve was left for the next two albums.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Change the form and the record loses part of what it knows. Its knowledge is waiting: slow entrances, space left in the arrangement, long forms that hold back their release. April 5th is built almost of rests; Time It’s Time withholds its full sound for minutes. Played fast and full, these songs would state the same longing and would not make the listener wait as the record does. The sequence is counted here, once: each side runs from a long opening through a quieter piece toward its close, and the whole moves from a doubted lesson to a long choral release, winter to spring. Held short because three songs work as conventional singles, where the form contains more than it enacts.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Evidence over forty years, and less of it than for the records that followed. The yield on return is chiefly formal: the arrangements are layered with guest players placed low, and details of organ, harmonica and percussion surface on later hearings, as do the dynamics of the long pieces. The record has had a second life as the first step toward Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, and much of the attention it receives comes through them, which counts as attention but is in part borrowed. The semantic yield is narrower: the words are few, half heard and devotional in cast, and some of what listeners find in them is projection invited by indistinctness. A body of re-examination that has kept opening this record cannot be shown.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The field is the album of the 1980s. The intrinsic force is real and moderate: a band from the synthesiser pop mainstream showed that a record could be made of space, organic instruments and long forms inside that mainstream, at a moment when the decade’s production ran the other way. It reorganised Talk Talk more than it reorganised the field, and the move from synthesiser to organic sound was being made by others in the same years. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: Life’s What You Make It has stayed in broadcast, but the record’s influence on later music, on what came to be called post-rock and on British art rock of the 1990s, runs mainly through the two records after it, and is not credited here.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Survival is weighed over forty years. The form is whole: the record survives as issued and has been remastered and reissued. Presence is continuous but narrower than its age would lead one to expect: the album has stayed in print, Life’s What You Make It has stayed in broadcast, but it is less widely heard than the decade’s landmark albums and partly kept in view by the band’s later records. That narrower presence is charged. The fabric has aged better than most of its year’s: organ, piano, acoustic instruments and choir in place of the synthesisers and gated drums of 1986 keep it largely out of its decade. The insistent drum and piano of Life’s What You Make It, and some keyboard tones, are of their time. One charge, against a fabric that has held, sets it level with The Unforgettable Fire, whose presence is charged more heavily.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, load-bearing on most of the record. Tim Friese-Greene’s production places a large cast of players so that the record still sounds spare: a harmonica, an organ, a double bass each heard for what it does and then withdrawn. Lee Harris’s drumming is exact and patient, holding the long grooves of Happiness Is Easy and Time It’s Time without push; Paul Webb’s bass is melodic and sparing. Mark Hollis’s voice is the record’s instrument of feeling, a cracked, soaring tenor that whispers on April 5th and tears at the top of Living in Another World. The faults are more than one: two songs are conventionally made, the drum and piano of Life’s What You Make It are rigid, and the indistinct diction costs clarity the record does not repay.
Score: 8.6 / 10
One law governs the record: longing for renewal, carried by space and patience, set against comforts that are taught and do not hold. The two most distant elements obey it. Life’s What You Make It, a hard, repetitive pop song, and April 5th, a near-silent pastoral, are the same claim seen from two sides: the slogan that does not save, and the waiting that might. The range runs from pop single and soul-inflected rock to pastoral, hymn and something near gospel. The law strains at Give It Up and I Don’t Believe in You, where the band’s earlier pop manners return and the record obeys its law by lyric and timbre more than by form. No break; two soft places.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness is held, as longing, doubt and something near prayer. Childhood is held, in the choir and the lesson handed down. The natural order is held in the season and the date, spring and April. The sacred is approached in the last piece and in the devotional cast of the words, without a theology. The couple appears in I Don’t Believe in You, and the social world enters only as received wisdom, the maxims of happiness and self-making, held at a distance. What holds the figure: labour, the state, history, place and the family beyond the children are absent, and two of the orders present, the sacred and the social, are glimpsed rather than held.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.0 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 8.6, then The Sublime and The Imperishable at 8.5, then The Inner Law at 8.4. A production that places a large cast so the record still sounds spare, with drumming as patience and a voice from whisper to tear; height on five of eight pieces, reached by patience, highest in the long release of Time It’s Time; a fabric kept largely out of its decade; and one law, longing for renewal set against comforts that do not hold, from a rigid pop song to a near-silent pastoral.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.0: consciousness, childhood, a season and a couple are held and joined by one voice, the sacred and the social only glimpsed, and labour, the state, history and place absent. Below the rest, The Archetypal Deep at 7.4, then The Unconcealment and Pressure on Tradition at 7.6: spring and spoiled innocence evoked by season and title and carried by no figure; a meaning felt more than articulated; and a force that reorganised the band more than the field, its wider reach belonging to the records after it.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.0 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.0, The Made at 8.6, The Inner Law at 8.4, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable meets the bar of 8.5 exactly, but The Swerve at 8.1, The Unconcealment at 7.6, Pressure on Tradition at 7.6 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.4 each fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Archetypal Deep, 7.4, below 7.5; every other axis it governs clears it, the next lowest being The Unconcealment and Pressure on Tradition at 7.6, and The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.0. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 8.0, at the line where Tier IV begins, below the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as released by EMI in February 1986, eight tracks in their original order on two sides, about forty-five minutes; judged from knowledge of the recording and its reception, with no recording, lyric sheet or credit list in hand. Running times are approximate. Singles, remixes, later remasters, live performances and the band’s later records are evidence, not the object. The words are sung indistinctly; no lyric is quoted, and songs are cited by title. Facts that could not be verified, among them the guest players by name and track, the instruments Mark Hollis plays, the studio and recording dates, the designer and imagery of the sleeve, which songs were issued as singles, chart positions and sales, are not given.