Talk Talk book, tribute album in the works

The band Talk Talk will be thirty this year, and to celebrate that a host of tribute stuff will be coming out. One of the things they’ve created is a book called Spirit of Talk Talk. It is limited edition and it will feature, amongs others, all of the art work James Marsh has ever done for the band. It will also contain hand-written lyrics from Talk Talk and contributions from those who’ve been influenced by the band, including Alan Wilder of Depeche Mode, Guy Gurvey of Elbow, and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital. Not only a book, but a tribute album will be coming out as well. This will be released on the 28th of May through Fierce Panda, and it will contain many people covering Talk Talk songs. Amongst those covering are Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond, Joan As Police Woman, and Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry will be covering ‘I Believe in You’.

I believe in you, Lindsay Morner told Peter Brudowski when he stood there ready to attempt his next endeavour. You would think these were exactly the kind of words he would want to hear at the start of something new, but they weren’t. The exact oppossite, frankly. For no one had ever believed in him, and he thought that just fine. Failing should be easy, shouldn’t it?, he once said. Achieving success is hard enough, but failing, that is something everyone should be able to do. People thought it ordinary for him to fail, he did so, he met expectations, that’s safe and solid and routine, and he would go on to his next project, spend his time and energy and having fun developing that, and then the cirlce would renew.

But now, someone believed in him. That was troublesome. He never had anyone believing in him, and suddenly, it made it to fail so much harder. Not to fail per se, I mean, sure, he could still fail, easily. But it wouldn’t be easy anymore to fail. It would be hard to fail. For now, suddenly, someone was expecting him, wanting him, hoping him to do well, and suddenly failing didn’t mean meeting expectations anymore, but suddenly it would be disappointing to PEOPLE. Not only to him (and frankly, he was never that disappointed with it, it was just one of those things, no one got hurt, and he would move on), but to other people, to Lindsay. Oi, he muttered to himself, What becomes of this world if you can’t even be a schmuck anymore.