IT'S MY LIFE

With their second album, Talk Talk become adults and Mark Hollis establishes himself as a class songwriter, with the help of Tim Friese- Greene, who become his partner, and the fourth member of Talk Talk. This Lp is not only synth pop: it is a research of new sounds.

The first song, "Dum Dum Girl" is good pop music with great attention to rhythm and melody (vote 7+). "Such a Shame", 5:42, entirely composed by Mark Hollis, is the masterpiece of the album. Slow start with great rhythmic progression, with tribal accents, percussive strophe and refrain of great class, with keyboards to paint a beautiful melody; a fading end that for the first time shows the taste of Hollis for the dilated sounds, which continue with inertia (vote 8,5/9).

"Renée" is another long song (6:22) by Mark Hollis and again it shows a wonderful melodic refrain. The songwriting of Mark Hollis is here of the highest quality, comparable to the eighty's rock songwriters (vote 8).

"It's My Life", the hit of the album, by Tim Friese-Greene and Mark Hollis, contains strange sounds, similar to the barrito of an elephant, good rhythm and engaging refrain, which remains in mind and will become a generational anthem (vote 7,5/8). With this song close a first spectacular side: both for the melodic inspiration, both for the sophistication of the sounds and for the songwriting no other group of synth-pop reached these peaks.

Side B open with another masterpiece by Hollis: "Tomorrow Started" (5:58), which presents a beautiful melancholy and languorous melody (thanks to the sound of the trumpet), which stands out for its exceptional keyboard arrangement; Hollis creates here an extraordinarily evocative, unforgettable atmosphere (vote 8,5). Then, suddenly, the magic disappears. The last four songs are not very inspired and are all fillers. "The Last Time" is one of the worst of the album, a tasteless pop synth (5,5/6), "Call in the Night Boy" seems to raise the quality of the album (7+) that instead falls with "Does Caroline Know?" (vote 5,5). The final "It's You" by Hollis (vote 7) closes a second side not up to the first where the Talk Talk have regressed to the style of their debut.

The album, as a whole, represents a big step forward for Talk Talk on the path of sound research that will soon lead to the post-rock masterpiece of Spirit of Eden.

Medium quality: 7,306. Vote album: 7,5. Three stars.