222: LAUGHING STOCK | TALK TALK
Throughout the 1990s I worked at a busy café on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. One time a suave intellectual patron came up to the counter to order his caffeine and noticed I was playing Peter Gabriel’s immense soundtrack Passion. He said, “I have an album for you” and told me it was “religious”. It was Laughing Stock. I had only known of Talk Talk as the 80s pop group that produced the big hit ‘It’s My Life’, and the group that made that moving late 80s song ‘Life is What You Make It’. My Suave was right. I have owned this religious album through at least 3 copies (now vinyl) since then. Laughing Stock is Mark Hollis’s soothing signature voice accompanied by brilliant transcendent swirling waves of organ and somber piano and supported by perfect repetitive jazz-style drum pulse..all great for falling into deep meditative listening. Don’t get too relaxed because, then, the dissonance shows up. Stock along with its predecessor Spirit of Eden are truly original records.
Jason Ankeny at AllMusic: Virtually ignored upon its initial release, Laughing Stock continues to grow in stature and influence by leaps and bounds. Picking up where Spirit of Eden left off, the album operates outside of the accepted sphere of rock to create music which is both delicate and intense; recorded with a large classical ensemble, it defies easy categorization, conforming to very few structural precedents -- while the gently hypnotic "Myrrhman" flirts with ambient textures, the percussive "Ascension Day" drifts toward jazz before the two sensibilities converge to create something entirely new and different on "New Grass." The epic "After the Flood," on the other hand, is an atmospheric whirlpool laced with jackhammer guitar feedback and Mark Hollis' remarkably plaintive vocals; it flows into "Taphead," perhaps the most evocative, spacious, and understated piece on the record. A work of staggering complexity and immense beauty, Laughing Stock remains an under-recognized masterpiece, and its echoes can be heard throughout much of the finest experimental music issued in its wake.
Wiki: Laughing Stock is the fifth and final studio album by British band Talk Talk, released in 1991. Following their previous release Spirit of Eden (1988), bassist Paul Webb left the group, which reduced Talk Talk to the duo of singer/multi-instrumentalist Mark Hollis and drummer Lee Harris. Talk Talk then acrimoniously left EMI and signed to the jazz-based Verve Records, and recorded Laughing Stock at London's Wessex Sound Studios with producer Tim Friese-Greene from September 1990 to April 1991.
Like Spirit of Eden the album featured improvised instrumentation from a large ensemble of musicians. The demanding sessions were marked by Hollis' perfectionist tendencies and desire to create a suitable recording atmosphere. Engineer Phill Brown stated that the album, like its predecessor, was "recorded by chance, accident, and hours of trying every possible overdub idea." The band split up following its release, effectively making Laughing Stock their last official release.
The album received praise from most critics. Pitchfork named it the eleventh best album of the 1990s, saying it "makes its own environment and becomes more than the sum of its sounds." In a 2007 list, Stylus Magazine named it the greatest post-rock album. Read more