12. Talk TalkSpirit Of Eden
Occasionally you get people who literally strong arm you into listening to albums – I remember once someone made me buy a Mars Volta album – I think this was one. I was really into Darkside’s first album at the time, where it’s really slow but really satisfying, and at some point someone was like ‘If you love that Darkside album, you have to listen to this’. You work backwards and hear the influence. You can tell there’s lots of artists who listen to this and can’t replicate it. I certainly couldn’t. If I play a C chord, then an F chord, you’re going to be getting a G chord pretty quickly.
This is the album I’d probably listen to when someone dies. It’s an album for a time when there are no words, one where the words don’t matter. I couldn’t sing a single line of this album, and yet it stirs something. It’s what you want from an artist, they’re making something you know you could never do in a million years. All the monkeys with all the typewriters in Abbey Road wouldn’t be able to put this back together. It’s just very special. Very slow. It reveals itself slowly, but its resolution is completely justified. I hate most post rock music, when it finally arrives it’s not the chords you’dl ike it to go to, but this is like Godspeed You! Black Emperor without the American voiceover, slow peaks and troughs and amazingly beautiful moments. It’s also in the great tradition of British pop artists who end up doing something really interesting. There’s a big tradition in this country where people start doing something very commercial, maybe a bit dumb, then 20 years later they’re suddenly making something amazing. Not to say it’s not great, but you listen to ‘It’s My Life’, which I first knew from the tampon adverts in the 90s, and you wouldn’t know it’s the same band.
