Straight away there's a sense of the pastoral. This is how I imagine Talk Talk sound every time, until I listen to them, get bored, and switch it off. The chirping of crickets, cicadas, hummingbirds, transforming into percussive beats and repeated tones. That melodeon again, straight out of Star-era Primal Scream nostalgia.

So, this is the masterpiece, the Forever Changes, the Todd Rundgren difficult magnum opus. Lots of the rough edges have been sanded away, and all those weeks stuck on tour buses have been put to good use. I like it. It still sounds very, very English to me, and I don't mean that in a pejorative way, just that it has something about it which echoes the Kinks, Blur, maybe even a band like the Montgolfier Brothers, or Elbow. I don't really hear the Beatles thing, but that might be my ears/prejudice.

I've skipped ahead to Dear God cos that seems like an interesting bit of work. I thought I might recognise this from car trips in the States or whatever, but it doesn't ring a bell. Funny how things that seemed so awful years ago - Frankie Says and all that - seem so kitsch and safe now. I don't think many people would bat an eyelid about this now would they. Would they?

I've deliberately avoided the whole Dukes of Stratosphear thing because that felt like a very different project. But there's no doubt there's a very obvious sixties/psych thing running through this. I wonder if that almost makes bits of it sound slightly... dated? Just listening to That's Really Super, Supergirl, and I don't know. It's '86 but it has quite a 90's feel - maybe the production? If I think about how much I love Swoon, the first Prefab Sprout album, I always feel as though it has a timeless quality, like it could have been made in the 40s, or the noughties, or whenever. But maybe that's a rose-tinted view. It's not a criticism. Plenty of stuff I love sounds dated.

Okay - 1000 Umbrellas, I can hear the Beatles thing.

It strikes me as odd how central, vital the drums and percussion seem to this record when the band didn't have a drummer. Perhaps that's why it works though? A "staff" drummer would have their own ideas of how it should sound, bring the accepted norms into play, whereas maybe the finished product is a result of a more tangential approach.

AP - "A summer's day cooked into one cake.”