In the Book of Exodus, the second book of the Old Testament and the Torah, Moses, while herding the flocks of his father-in-law on Mount Horeb, came across a burning bush. The burning bush began to speak to Moses and revealed itself to be God (a/k/a Yahweh, a/k/a I am that I am). God tells Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and gives him supernatural powers to do so. Some of those powers include changing his staff into a snake and turning water into blood. Moses then returns to Egypt, tells the Pharaoh what God wants and what will happen if he refuses, showing off a few of these powers. The Pharaoh refuses and a series of plagues befall Egypt until the Pharaoh is forced to release the Israelites.
Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt to Mount Sinai. There, they agree to be his people. Shortly after, God arrives a top the mountain and Moses ascends it to receive the Ten Commandments.
Now whether or not this occurred in the Bible or the Torah, I’m not sure, but I am sure that it occurred in the film The Ten Commandments. When Moses returns from Mount Horeb, after speaking with God as the burning bush, his hair has gone gray.
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Last summer, after reading yet another laudatory piece about the later work of British New Wave-turned-Post Rock group Talk Talk, specifically Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, I could no longer contain my curiosity and purchased a copy of Laughing Stock.
At this point, I had only heard some of their earlier New Wave/Synth Pop work, like the singles “Talk Talk” and “It’s My Life”. Not enough to have a specific sound association with the group. I also had never really gotten into other acts deemed “Post Rock”. Slint, Tortoise, Mogwai and God Speed You Black Emperor! were all bands I’d heard of but hadn’t actually listened to except for Slint’s Spiderland, which I had heard a couple of years prior. Parts of Spiderland I found interesting, but they were not enough to hold me. Therefore, my ideas of what to expect to hear on Laughing Stock were fairly limited.
The first plays of the album happened while at work. I listened to it in its entirety, uninterrupted. I was mystified. I had never heard anything like it before. At the time, I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. However unsure I felt about it, I couldn’t deny that there was something drawing me back into it. So I listened again and again.
In the following days, as the album’s beauty and power began to grow on me, I noticed a change in my appearance. My hair was turning gray. I had noticed a few here and there in the past couple of years but now there appeared to be quite a few more. While this was happening last summer, I was 25 going on 26. Fairly young to be going gray. The more I thought about it, the more I began to think that Laughing Stock was responsible.
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The album, the band’s last, was released in 1991. Like many great works of art, it was ignored upon its release and did not become important and influential until years later. It’s understandable. Here was an album experimenting with various genres (Jazz, Ambient, Rock, a little Classic), some of which weren’t popular at the time, lyrics filled with religious imagery and containing an atmosphere that could be moody, ethereal and penetrating within a single song. It wasn’t a light album, or something to make you dance, as you could say about some of their earlier work. Laughing Stock was after your soul. Though not in an evil way.
Laughing Stock is a spiritual work. It wants to elevate and enlighten your soul. You sense this overall, not strictly due to the religious imagery in the lyrics. Because of the way Mark Hollis sings, sometimes in a mumble, sometimes in a cry, sometimes in tongues, you cannot make out much of the words anyway. Not to say that they are unimportant or that Hollis’ voice is. Hollis’ voice is an essential piece of the album. The purity of his vocals, which can move from plaintive to weary to exultant tones, again, within one song, are the listener’s guide. On “New Grass”, for example, they ache and waver as Hollis channels the message for us to decode.
If Hollis’ vocals speak to the mind, the music, mostly composed by Hollis and producer/multi-instrumentalist Tim Friese-Greene, speaks to the soul and in its own language. Because of the experimental blend of genres, there are myriad sounds within the album. There are grooves that seem to heal as they move through the body. Bursts of noise that startle and frighten. Heavenly flutters of strings that calm. Ambient breaks like open fields. While you listen, you feel these sounds emotionally. At times these emotions created by the music are too much to take. You feel immense joy during some tracks and deep sadness in others. Maybe this is another reason why it took so long for the album to be praised. The passion, beauty, emotion and power are extremely strong. Sometimes it hurts to listen to this album.
I’ve never heard anything like it. If I had to compare it to anything else, it would be Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. Like Stock, Weeks is experimental, using Jazz and improvisation heavily, and deeply spiritual. There’s a purity, a magic and a metaphysical search in both of these albums. The differences are in the improvisational aspect and the lyrical subject matter. Morrison is providing vivid portraits of characters while Hollis’ are simpler, more primal mantras and incantations of rites. One is not better than the other, they’re just dealing in different aspects of the human condition.
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While I listened to this album repeatedly last summer, more of my brown hair began to turn gray. Was Laughing Stock really responsible? Probably not. It’s most likely an hereditary trait from my mother’s side of the family. But I brought up Moses before the burning bush for a reason. To me, Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock is like the sound of God. It’s heavenly, it’s pure, it’s difficult, it’s beautiful. With every listen, no matter how I am feeling before hand, it changes me. Is it my favorite album? I don’t know. It’s hard for me to even consider along side other works. It’s hard for me to even consider it music, actually. It feels like more than that. These are lofty claims, I know, but to me, they’re the truth. I will post three of the tracks from the album, in the next three days, for you to decide for yourself. They may convert you or they may not. Just give it a chance. This album could change your life.
