The Quietus - A new rock music and pop culture website

Baker's Dozen

Spiders' Webs From Scraps: Guy Garvey's Favourite Albums
Lisa Jenkins , May 11th, 2016 09:59

Before his edition of the Meltdown festival begins next month, the singer-songwriter, broadcaster and Elbow frontman talks to Lisa Jenkins about his love of Talk Talk, lyrical grey areas and nutmeg-based mishaps

Talk_talk___the_colour_of_spring_1462959865_resize_460x400

Talk Talk – The Colour Of Spring
Can you explain why you chose three Talk Talk albums?

I was just being honest. The most listened-to records in my collection, I'm just astounded at the extraordinary thing that they did. I'm from a generation of people who listen to music, or who listened, past tense, to music. I really wanted to belong to it, you know, you'd paint an album sleeve on the back of your coat to say this is who I am and what I listen to. And I was very happy throughout my teen years to be defined by what I was listening to. And I wanted the world to know about that, claiming a band as my own. I was a total fan when they did what I still consider to be the bravest thing that any band in rock music has done, which was after creating this amazing, successful commercial record that nevertheless is so incredibly creative and artistic, to then go further into the arts and completely disregard the fiscal side of what they had done with the success of The Colour Of Spring.