Review Summary: The record is calculatedly sparse and packed with haunting wonder, and I love it to death.
Spirit of Eden was released in 1988, two years after these guys' drum-machine propelled world-y pop record The Color of Spring. These two years saw Talk Talk’s music begin in a much slower, more pensive and human direction, allowing it to breathe and bloom into something really special. Spirit of Eden is dripping with a mood that just oozes cool. Layers of guitar slide and twang over each other in jazzy flourishes, backed by rattling and booming percussion, and the glowing hum of strings. The music morphs and twists into bursts of electricity before crumbling back down into a meditative lounge. The first track (on European editions of the record, which happens to be the one I’ve got, though I live in Mississippi), “The Rainbow, Eden, Desire,” is a beautifully sprawling twenty-three minute suite in which Mark Hollis croons the way only he can over a winding, sparkling scatter of wonderfully constructed and placed jazz instrumentation. The record is calculatedly sparse and packed with haunting wonder, and I love it to death.
