International Times: The Four Seasons of Talk Talk

My latest book review for International Times is on In Another World: The Four Seasons of Talk Talk by Graeme Thomson:

'In Another World: The Four Seasons of Talk Talk is a biography of four records. In the case of Hollis and Talk Talk it is not really possible to write a full biography of the musician or the band as so many of those involved cannot or will not talk about their experiences. That leaves the music, which is Thomson’s main focus and, also, where our focus should ultimately be. He wisely leaves the last word to Hollis: ‘Sometimes I don’t know what to say when I get asked all these questions, because for me the music says it all’. The greatest recommendation of this book is that in it the music speaks again.'

For more of my writing on music, see my article for Seen and Unseen entitled 'Rock ‘n’ roll’s long dance with religion' and my co-authored book with Peter Banks, ‘The Secret Chord’, which has been described as an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief.

The book can be purchased from Lulu - https://www.lulu.com/shop/jonathan-evens-and-peter-banks/the-secret-chord/paperback/product-1pey2g67.html?q=peter+banks&page=1&pageSize=4

Covering a range of musical styles and influences, from gospel music to X Factor, The Secret Chord conveys enthusiasm for music and its transformative powers. The book asks is there really a 'Secret Chord' that would both please the Lord and nearly everybody else as described in Leonard Cohen's popular song 'Hallelujah'?

My earlier pieces for IT are: an interview with the artist Alexander de Cadenet; an interview with artist, poet, priest Spencer Reece, an interview with the poet Chris Emery, an interview with Jago Cooper, Director of the the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, a profile of singer-songwriter Bill Fay, plus reviews of:

• Hulda Guzman: Please awake - asked Nature kindly' at Turner Contemporary;
• 'Devotions' by Lucy Caldwell and 'Catholic Modernism and the Irish ‘Avant-Garde’: The Achievement of Brian Coffey, Denis Devlin, and Thomas MacGreevy' by James Matthew Wilson;
• the 'Stations' project from Dunlin Press;
• 'William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy';
• Joseph Arthur in concert;
• installations by Chiharu Shiota and Yin Xiuzhen at Hayward Gsllery,
• U2's 'Days of Ash', Mumford and Sons' 'Prizefighter' and Moby's 'Future Quiet';
• 'Collected Poems' by Kevin Crossley-Holland;
• 'Lux' by Rosalía;
• 'Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere';
• 'Great Art Explained' by James Payne;
• 'Down River: In Search of David Ackles' by Mark Brend;
• 'Headwater' by Rev Simpkins;
• 'The Invisibility of Religion in Contemporary Art' by Jonathan A. Anderson;
• 'Breaking Lines' at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art,
• albums by Deacon Blue, Mumford and Sons, and Andrew Rumsey,
• also by Joy Oladokun and Michael Kiwanaku;
• 'Nolan's Africa' by Andrew Turley;
• Mavis Staples in concert at Union Chapel;
• T Bone Burnett's 'The Other Side' and Peter Case live in Leytonstone;
• Helaine Blumenfeld's 'Together' exhibition,
• 'What Is and Might Be and then Otherwise' by David Miller;
• 'Giacometti in Paris' by Michael Peppiatt,
• the first Pissabed Prophet album; and
• 'Religion and Contemporary Art: A Curious Accord', a book which derives from a 2017 symposium organised by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art.

Several of my short stories have been published by IT including three about Nicola Ravenscroft's EarthAngel sculptures (then called mudcubs), which we exhibited at St Andrew's Wickford in 2022. The first story in the series is 'The Mudcubs and the O Zone holes'. The second is 'The Mudcubs and the Clean-Up King', and the third is 'The mudcubs and the Wall'. My other short stories to have been published by International Times are 'The Black Rain', a story about the impact of violence in our media, 'The New Dark Ages', a story about principles and understandings that are gradually fading away from our modern societies, and 'The curious glasses', a story based on the butterfly effect.

IT have also published several of my poems, including 'Spencer Reece at Bemerton' which is based on the visit that I made to Bemerton in 2026 with Spencer Reece, 'The ABC of creativity', which covers attention, beginning and creation, and 'The Edge of Chaos', a state of existence poem. Also published have been three poems from my 'Five Trios' series. 'Barking' is about St Margaret’s Barking and Barking Abbey and draws on my time as a curate at St Margaret's. 'Bradwell' is a celebration of the history of the Chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall, the Othona Community, and of pilgrimage to those places. Broomfield in Essex became a village of artists following the arrival of Revd John Rutherford in 1930. His daughter, the artist Rosemary Rutherford, also moved with them and made the vicarage a base for her artwork including paintings and stained glass. Then, Gwynneth Holt and Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones moved to Broomfield in 1949 where they shared a large studio in their garden and both achieved high personal success. 'Broomfield' reviews their stories, work, legacy and motivations.

To read my poems published by Stride, click here, here, here, here, here, and here. My poems published in Amethyst Review are: 'Runwell', 'Are/Are Not', 'Attend, attend' and 'Maritain, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages'.

I am among those whose poetry has been included in Thin Places & Sacred Spaces, a recent anthology from Amethyst Press. I also had a poem included in All Shall Be Well: Poems for Julian of Norwich, the first Amethyst Press anthology of new poems.

'Five Trios' is a series of poems on thin places and sacred spaces in the Diocese of Chelmsford. The five poems in the series are:

• 'Barking';
• 'Bradwell';
• 'Broomfield';
• 'Pleshey'; and
• 'Runwell'.

These poems have been published by Amethyst Review and International Times.

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Talk Talk - Wealth.

David Ackles and After The Fire

 

This weekend I received copies of Mark Brend's Down River: In Search of David Ackles and the After The Fire box set Bright Lights. Both offer fascinating reflections on how creatives can explore aspects of Christian faith in and through popular music.

Down River is described as follows: 

"Down River: In Search Of David Ackles is an illuminating study of mythmaking, the popular music industry, and a forgotten enigma of the 1970s.

In 1972, David Ackles’s third album, American Gothic, was released to a flurry of press plaudits declaring it to be ‘the Sgt Pepper of folk’ and one of the greatest records ever made. Yet the album, like its two predecessors, failed to sell, and after one more record, its creator simply vanished. He found work, raised a family, and died a couple of decades later, having never made another record.

Today, Ackles’s music is largely consigned to the streaming netherworld. It is yet to be properly repackaged and reappraised, and he remains largely unknown. But there is no middle ground. You either love him or you’ve never heard of him. His admirers range from Black Flag’s Greg Ginn to indie polymath Jim O’Rourke to Genesis drummer turned platinum-selling solo artist Phil Collins. In 2003, when Elvis Costello interviewed Elton John for the first episode of his television show Spectacle, the two spoke at some length, and with palpable respect, about Ackles’s great talent, before performing a duet of his ‘Down River’—the same song Collins had selected for Desert Island Discs a decade earlier.

David Ackles did not make rock’n’roll music, and Down River is not a rock’n’roll story. It is a search for an artist who got lost. Not a pretty-good, I-wonder-what-happened-to-him sort of talent, but a man revered as one of the greats. Drawing on conversations with Ackles during the last year of his life as well as full access to archive material, it positions him as one of the great maverick talents of popular music—an equal of Scott Walker and Tom Waits. It seeks to understand the disconnect between his obvious gifts and his commercial failure, and wonders about the fickleness of fame and cult status.

How does this process of retrospective recognition work, and why does it happen for some but not others? Was Ackles’s music just too strange, or might his time yet come? And what do the answers to these questions say about the mythmaking of the popular music industry—and about us, the audience?"

For more on David Ackles see here.

The definitive collection of After The Fire, 'Bright Lights' contains all of the bands five albums as well as demos, B-sides and live tracks, with 12 recordings that are issued here on CD for the first time and 14 that are completely unreleased. The project has been overseen by founding member Peter Banks who, along with members Andy Piercy and John Russell, has been interviewed exclusively for the sleeve notes and has also opened up his photo archive, providing a wealth of rare images.

• Disc One features the band's debut album 'Signs Of Change' as well as bonus tracks.
• Disc Two contains three early demos, previously unreleased on CD as well as 13 previously unreleased demos recorded in preparation for 'Laser Love'.
• Disc Three features 'Laser Love' that includes hit single 'One Rule For You' as well as rare single edits, B-sides and live tracks.
• Disc Four includes '80-f' as well as nine recordings that have never been issued on CD before, including rare B-sides and seven tracks from the original version of '80f'.
• Disc Five contains 'Batteries Not Included' and two bonus tracks.
• Disc Six features 'AT2F', one track unreleased on CD, a completely unreleased track as well as a rare extended version of the band's hit 'Der Kommissar'.

For a review of 'Bright Lights' by Rupert Loydell see here. For more on After The Fire see here.

My co-authored book with Peter Banks from After The Fire, ‘The Secret Chord’, has been described as an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief. 
The book can be purchased from Lulu - https://www.lulu.com/shop/jonathan-evens-and-peter-banks/the-secret-chord/paperback/product-1pey2g67.html?q=peter+banks&page=1&pageSize=4

Covering a range of musical styles and influences, from gospel music to X Factor, The Secret Chord conveys enthusiasm for music and its transformative powers. The book asks is there really a 'Secret Chord' that would both please the Lord and nearly everybody else as described in Leonard Cohen's popular song 'Hallelujah'?

While a significant number of books have been published exploring the relationships between music, art, popular culture and theology - many of which Peter and I have enjoyed and from which we have benefited - such books tend either to academic analysis or semi biography about artistes whose output the writers' enjoy. By contrast, The Secret Chord is an accessible exploration of artistic dilemmas from a range of different perspectives which seeks to draw the reader into a place of appreciation for what makes a moment in a 'performance' timeless and special.

The Secret Chord seeks to explore a number of the dilemmas which musicians and other artists face, not so much in order to map out one route through or around these dilemmas but in an attempt to get the creative juices flowing. Our experience of creativity is of disparate and often contradictory ideas being crushed, swirled, fermented, shaken and stirred in our minds in order that the fine wine of creativity results. Our hope is that The Secret Chord, by exploring artistic dilemmas from a range of different perspectives, will mature in reader’s minds just like fine wine or a precious pearl.

Peter Banks and I wanted to write a book that would be an accessible interesting read but also with sufficient depth to engage those with an interest in academic and theological study. Peter is a successful composer and musician with mainstream chart successes in many countries in the world within his most well known musical collaboration, After The Fire. As well as a musician he has worked in other creative industries and now contributes professionally to various online publications as well as his popular music and technology blog, The BanksyBoy Brief.

Rev Dr Hugh Rayment-Pickard, author and co-founder of IntoUniversity said "Secret Chord is well written, full of wisdom, great quotes and illustrations. It's great to read something about art and Christianity that embraces such diverse material."

Carol Biss, Managing Director of Book Guild Publishing, said “Secret Chord is an interesting and impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life, written through the prism of Christian belief. Covering a huge range of musical styles and influences, from gospel music to X Factor, Secret Chord conveys a great enthusiasm for music and its transformative powers, which readers are sure to find engaging.”

Heather Joy Rowe said it is a highly informative and eye-opening book: 'The writers ... are delving into the arts, mainly looking at the subject from a theological point of view and they have certainly opened my eyes as before reading this book I had a very 'one-dimensional view' of this huge subject.'

Another response noted: "For someone who treats music as art, as something to be understood as an art form within a particular context etc etc, or someone who is themselves creatively active, then it's certainly interesting and worthwhile reading. You might have an epiphany!"

Rod Williamson said: "The book gives a very thoughtful look at the artist's role, inspiration, challenge and so on. There are many examples and anecdotes from popular and classical fields, and beyond the realms of music. As one who wouldn't know the difference between a D minor and a Morris Minor it kept my attention throughout, but I'm sure it would appeal to the Monsieur Highbrow fraternity."

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David Ackles - Be My Friend.