.song de|con|struc|tion thread.

[ottokbre]

Take apart a song you love (or hate), bit by bit, objective/subjective. Help make us all better at listening/appreciation. Figure out this art. Make your own goddam reasons and so on....

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I Beleive In You - Talk Talk/Spirit of Eden (1988)

Phil Brown started working with Talk Talk for the first time on this album. By all accounts he was strictly an engineer as (lead singer) Mark Hollis had it in his head what he wanted to hear put to tape, and was therefor the producer. So the label hired Brown and put them in Wessex studios for what amounted to be over six months. (I'm sure y'all read that issue dammit!)

'I Beleive In You' is the standout track by far. Starting out with airy drum sounds with a quick (gated?) and distant kick drum mapping out the pace out timing of the track. Then piano chords come in, resolved and stoic, like old Miles Davis. Guitars come in and go out with a signature sound. Clean, brillliant and dimensional sounding.

The lyrics are pretty sobering and upfront. Less than vauge 'open to interpretation' words here. It's a song about herion use and it taking people away. Its very much first person and intimate, I think the singing style Hollis adopts is so nerving that it all works. He's doing what all singer songwriter's usually botch up, which is not hiding the emotive value of the song behind some fear of being trite. From what I have read, it took no small effort in the studio, and there on the floor layed the numerous 2" reels to make it just so.

Hear it in my spirit
I've seen heroin for myself
On the street so young laying wasted
Enough ain't it enough
Crippled world
I just can't bring myself to see it starting

Tell me how I fear it
I buy prejudice for my health
Is it worth so much when you taste it
Enough there ain't enough hidden hurt
A time to sell yourself
A time for passing

at this point (3:15) the chord progression goes into a sweet major and a coral ushers in as Mark sings Spirit......Spirit

It's so amazingly transending and etherial. I don't think coral's voices would be used as well until Bjork's Vespertine would come along. The mixture of down tempo noir-ish jazz vibes and beat generation sobrietry with classical elements make it an ambitous song. But then you take the maximum acoustical image and feel, as if this song was made in a vacated opera house, slide the fader up and get Mark's haunting and untraditional vocals, and you get this sort of esoteric perfection.