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Jason Maloney reviews
V o l u m e # 2 1 Week Commencing: 12th September 1988 Online Date: 15th September 2005
Spirit of Eden
By far the most discussed release of the week was Talk Talk’s fourth studio album. To some, their transformation from the doleful synth combo who broke through in 1982 with sleeper hits Today and Talk Talk to purveyors of ethereal freeform rock workouts came as a surprise.
Anyone paying closer attention to 1984’s It’s My Life and then The Colour Of Spring two years later would have caught glimpses of what followed on Spirit Of Eden. Although nobody quite expected something so drastic so soon.
The Colour Of Spring had masterfully fused the pop sensibilities of earlier singles with a growing penchant for sombre mood pieces; Life’s What You Make It and Living In Another World were trademark Talk Talk compositions, but the musical settings hinted at the direction which band leader Mark Hollis was committed to. Tired of manufactured production and particularly of playing the Top 40 game under the imposing eye of EMI, Hollis – emboldened no doubt by the Top 10 success and rave critical reception afforded The Colour Of Spring – dispensed with any notion of mainstream appeal on the next record.
Comprising just six tracks, although differentiating between the half-dozen pieces of extraordinary music was pretty much unnecessary, Spirit Of Eden was at turns deathly quiet and uninhibitedly cacophonous. Melodies were still present, just not in the traditional sense; EMI tried to create a hit from the album with a re-edited I Believe In You but any such attempt was doomed to fail. The softer passages, punctuated by frequent silence, recalled the more esoteric moments from The Colour Of Spring (namely April 5th and Chameleon Day), while the impassioned climax to Living In Another World seemed the starting point for the likes of standout track, Desire.
Apparently nonplussed by the album and the sudden loss of expected revenue such a limelight-shunning move entailed, EMI sought to undermine Hollis’ defiance by spending the subsequent years heavily repromoting the Talk Talk back-catalogue to such an extent that, in 1991, the band were bizarrely nominated for a BRIT Award for Best British Group on the strength of material recorded and originally released in 1984!
A move to Polydor, and their iconic jazz imprint Verve, soon followed but after just one further album in the Spirit Of Eden vein (the equally-acclaimed Laughing Stock) Hollis discarded the Talk Talk moniker and recorded under his own name.
Meanwhile, throughout the 1990s and beyond, EMI continued to churn out Best Ofs, Very Best Ofs, Remix Albums, Remixes of the Remix Album and so on, ad infinitum.
Ancient Heart
Basingstoke’s most famous musical star until Craig David re-rewound himself into the frame more than a decade later, the precocious teenager with the Elvis jawline and Suzanne Vega vocal chords struck immediate chart gold in the late summer of 1988 with offbeat Top 10 single Good Tradition. A whole album was already in the can, and WEA wasted little time in unleashing Ancient Heart onto the public.
Debuting at a respectable #13, it really took off at the turn of the year after even odder second single, Twist In My Sobriety, had graced the Top 30 and scored an unlikely BRITs nomination for Best Single at the infamous 1989 shambles overseen by Samantha Fox and Mick Fleetwood. The song itself was covered later the same year by Liza Minelli on her Pet Shop Boys-assisted Results album, and was more representative of Ancient Heart‘s overall style than her breakthrough hit.
While the handful of upbeat tunes in the Good Tradition mould were effective enough, Tikaram’s forte was introspective, atmospheric vignettes such as He Likes The Sun, For All These Years and Valentine Heart.
Critics scoffed at the lack of life experience betrayed by the lyrical content – a student with imagination and insight obviously no match for the drugged-up halfwits they deified – but the lack of real versatility shown by subsequent albums in the early ’90s was disappointing after such a memorable start. Eventually peaking at #3, Ancient Heart chalked up very nearly a whole year on the UK Top 75, but by 1992 she couldn’t even make the chart at all.
(DVDfever Dom adds: “I’d also recommend ‘Cathedral Song’ from this album, even if it did stall at No.48 in January 1989.”)
The second member of classic Early-80s American girl-group The Go-Go’s to venture out on her own after the band’s demise, Wiedlin’s solo career never came close to the levels of success or longevity enjoyed by Belinda Carlisle. This debut set, however, included the seminal Rush Hour smash hit single and its underrated follow-up Inside A Dream, which deserved to emulate Rush Hour’s chart exploits.
The album’s title, and one of its 10 tracks, made reference to her very public stance on Animal Rights and her status as a vocal Anti-Fur supporter (posing naked alongside her fellow band members – with just a banner to preserve their modesty – on one notable ocassion for the cause).
In the UK, Wiedlin vanished from the public consciousness until 1998 when she resurfaced as co-writer on Howard Jones’ comeback single Tomorrow Is Now.
Sunshine on Leith
Bespectacled Scottish siblings The Proclaimers first hit the charts in the autumn of 1987 with Letter To America, their strong brogue and pared-down sound something of an acquired taste but appealing enough to hit #6 nonetheless. Eighteen months after the Gerry Rafferty-produced debut album This Is The Story had appeared, Sunshine On Leith not only consolidated the duo’s initial success but built on it.
Introductory single, I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), was less abrasive than Letter To America and proved another durable Top 20 hit; belated US chart action ensued in 1992 when it was prominently featured in the quirky Johnny Depp/Mary Stuart-Masterson film Benny & Joon.
Page Content copyright © Jason Maloney, 2005.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.