Council Records (label)
08 April 2020 (released)
08 April 2020
Talk Show rip it up and shout again on 4 track EP ‘These People’. These are the sounds of a superlative societal takedown where no one’s safe.
Talk Show are a sonarvirus and only the meek, the weak, the defected will avoid being infected. It’s a dog-eat-dog catfight to the final breath on a decaying planet as the cover deftly depicts: masses of blind pugilists with stray punches that rarely/barely hit the target. A semiologist would decode it thus: box clever or be boxed in.
Talk Show know how to rope a dope and reel in the slippery eel, cast the bait and wait. Harrison Swann’s skin-deep hectored invectives fight to get themselves in order, his anger and frustrations apparent in his baleful delivery. Tom Holmes’s wiry guitar work leads and bleeds, this is finger-pickin’ fret-work to believe in. George Sullivan’s bust-a-gut-wrenching bass and Chloe McGregor’s thrumskin-action create a hefty backdrop kick-in-the-teeth.
Mostly written on public transport the osmosing after-effect is one of snatched dialogues, misheard mutterings and pressure-cooker chatterings, the remiss herd overheard.
Talk Show have had enough of modern living’s deathless and ‘cheap plastic things’ (‘Stress’) that render the lazy-willed plasticine and pliable. The human race looks like it lost. However, fruitful hope may thrive in the ‘bottom of my soul, that’s where the peaches grow’ (‘Atomica’).
Love offers promise, it always does, ‘I hope you say the words that I know’ (‘Banshee’) and mark their remarks ‘Don’t say words you can’t take back’ (‘Petrolhead’).
Four tracks of grinning malevolence and head-spinning ultraviolence.
Talk Show have the remedies. They have the melodies. They have the questions and the answers. Submit and subscribe. You won’t look back again.
