THE COLOUR OF SPRING

This one I hesitate to give five stars because the next two by them are just on another level, but ultimately I went with my gut and will give a five to this amazing album. One of the most utterly natural-sounding pop albums you'll ever hear, up there with Pet Sounds. The spiritual drifting of opener Happiness is Easy immediately ushers you into this album's spiritual sunshine world. Every song on here is just gorgeous, and songs like Life's What You Make It are so catchy and fun. The pure sound of this record is unmatched, it's quite hard to describe. And the two songs I especially want to point out are April 5th and Chameleon Day. April 5th sounds like a much more atmospheric version of something like Renee, and is possibly the best track on the album. Gentle drum machine (might be real drums?) and organ drones pass through you as Mark Hollis sings with that angelic voice. Chameleon Day, meanwhile, stretches more into the avant-garde, a sparse piano track featuring Hollis going from gentle to a shout. But the last minute is something special, a jazzy scrawl that sounds like the beginning of The Rainbow from Spirit of Eden. But back to the rest of the record, the second side, the second side takes more epic proportions than the gentle drifting of the first side, like Living in Another World's staircase flow song structure to an addictive and huge chorus. And the ender Time It's Time is even huger, leading you out of the album perfectly, ending on what almost sounds like a lullaby. I'm not quite sure how Talk Talk's legacy would be without the final two albums, but this already makes sure it's on a great note.