Well, I'm up at 4:30 in the morning getting ready for my Saturday long run (10 miles this week!), and since I'm rarely up at this hour, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity by listening to albums that I feel are best suited for this time of day, when everything outside is dark and still, and it can feel like you're the only person in the world.
The album I chose to listen to, which I haven't listened to in way too long, is the unbelievably beautiful and passionate Spirit of Eden by Talk Talk. I'm not sure if I've recommended this album before on this blog, but if I have, well, it deserves multiple recommendations. This is one of the most transcendent pieces of music ever recorded; it cuts right to the soul, and is simply unforgettable. It also inspired one of the best written album reviews I've ever read.
Talk Talk were a pretty standard but talented 80s pop band that used to tour with Duran Duran. For this album, however, they were given complete control over the recording process by their record label, and what resulted was an album with no song shorter than 5 and a half minutes, no remotely poppy sounding song to speak of, poetic and opaque lyrics that often can't be easily understood, and an incredible amount of complex and gorgeous instrumentation, including arguably the most beautiful use of an all boys choir in pop music. In short, a masterpiece.
Spirit of Eden is quite an experience, and one thing that often surprises people about it is how timeless it sounds considering that it was recorded in the 80s by a pop producer (the band actually shared producers with Duran Duran). There are no synthesizers to speak of, no 80s power drums, just wonderful, often improvised music. The two classic albums that seem the closest to Spirit of Eden to me are Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and John Coltrane's Love Supreme. The Coltrane comparison is particularly poignant because of how both Coltrane and Mark Hollis, the lead singer and songwriter of Talk Talk, got inspired to make Love Supreme and Spirit of Eden by kicking drugs.
So, I can't recommend this album enough, especially if you're awake at 4 in the morning like me one day and need a magical album to listen to. If you've never heard this before, I envy what you're about to feel for the first time.
(If you can't be bothered to listen to the whole album for some reason, check out the song "I Believe In You". That's the song with the boys choir in it, and it's probably the only viable "single" off of the album.")
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