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**The Colour Of Spring**
★★★★☆

In the grand narrative of 1980s pop evolution, few albums pivot quite as dramatically as Talk Talk's third long-player. Where Mark Hollis and his cohorts had previously dealt in the glossy currency of new romantic synth-pop – complete with hit singles and Top of the Pops appearances – *The Colour Of Spring* finds them gazing toward altogether more mysterious horizons.

The seeds of transformation were already germinating on 1984's *It's My Life*, but nothing could have prepared listeners for this quantum leap. Following their early success with EMI and the chart-bothering likes of "Talk Talk" and "Today", the band found themselves at a creative crossroads. The synthetic sheen that had defined their first two albums was beginning to feel like a straitjacket, and Hollis, in particular, was growing restless with the confines of commercial expectation.

What emerged in February 1986 was a work that straddled two worlds – still tethered to pop sensibilities yet reaching toward the experimental territories that would soon define their legendary final phase. Producer Tim Friese-Greene, who had joined the fold for *It's My Life*, proved instrumental in facilitating this metamorphosis, encouraging the band's more adventurous impulses while maintaining enough melodic coherence to keep the record company suits from breaking out in cold sweats.

The album's sonic palette represents a radical departure from Talk Talk's electronic origins. Real drums crash and whisper where drum machines once clicked and thudded, while organic textures – rustling, breathing, creaking – seep into the mix like morning mist. Hollis's voice, always the band's secret weapon, takes on an almost shamanic quality, floating above arrangements that seem to shift and breathe with their own mysterious logic.

"Living In Another World" serves as the perfect gateway drug, its hypnotic groove and crystalline production values offering familiar pleasures while hinting at deeper currents beneath. The track's success – reaching number 48 in the UK charts – proved that Talk Talk could still craft a single, even as they were busy deconstructing the very notion of what a song could be.

But it's "Life's What You Make It" that stands as the album's undisputed masterpiece, a six-minute epic that unfolds like a fever dream of cascading harmonies and shifting dynamics. The song's central refrain – simple on the surface yet somehow profound in Hollis's delivery – became something of an anthem for the band's artistic philosophy. Here was pop music as transcendence, familiar enough to lodge in your memory yet strange enough to reveal new secrets with each listen.

The album's deeper cuts reward patient exploration. "April 5th" drifts by on waves of ambient texture and whispered vocals, while "Chameleon Day" builds from skeletal beginnings into something approaching orchestral grandeur. These aren't songs in any conventional sense – they're environments, emotional landscapes that shift and evolve according to their own internal logic.

Perhaps most remarkably, "Time It's Time" points directly toward the radical deconstructions of *Spirit Of Eden* and *Laughing Stock*, its ten-minute runtime filled with pregnant pauses and sudden eruptions of sound. That EMI allowed such experiments to see the light of day speaks to either remarkable prescience or corporate confusion – probably the latter.

The album's influence has proven far more enduring than its modest commercial performance might have suggested. While it peaked at a respectable number 8 in the UK, *The Colour Of Spring* has since been recognised as a crucial bridge between the synth-pop 80s and the post-rock movement that would emerge in the following decade. Radiohead, Sigur Rós, and countless other practitioners of atmospheric rock owe a considerable debt to the sonic territories mapped out here.

Today, *The Colour Of Spring* occupies a unique position in the Talk Talk canon – more accessible than the challenging final albums, yet far more adventurous than the early hits. It's the sound of a band discovering that the most interesting destination isn't necessarily the one you set out for, and that sometimes the best way forward is to trust the music to show you the way. In an era of increasing musical conservatism, such artistic courage feels both nostalgic and urgently necessary.