13. Talk TalkSpirit Of Eden
This is an undisputed classic. Listening to this album is an experience almost unlike any other: it plays with you, gives you little hints that it’s going to do something regular and song-like but instead retreats into this impossibly beautiful soundscape instead. It’s super dynamic, there are almost total silences and then these great crescendos out of nowhere. Of all of the records that have been critically re-appraised in the last few years this is easily the most deserving. I can’t think of many better ways to spend an hour or so than putting this on my turntable and just disappearing into it. How anyone could possibly find it depressing is a mystery to me. A lot of people associate melancholy music – rightly, because that’s what it means – with sadness, but I sort of don’t. A lot of music, like Sigur Rós which is in the same ballpark, is so incredibly beautiful that it’s simultaneously painful and also unbelievably uplifting. I don’t understand how anyone can listen to music like this and find it depressing. Life’s hard, so either you’re just not letting it in, or… do you know what I mean? A lot of people find The Smiths miserable, but I find shiny horrible pop really, really miserable. Anything that has this much beauty in it cannot be depressing. Yes it’s wistful and there’s pain in it, but it’s so bittersweet.
