The Reaction - Souled Out (1979)

The Talk Talk story begins in the late 1970's. when bassist Paul Webb and drummer Lee Harris did some studio work with producer Ed Hollis, who later went on to manage punk band Eddie & the Hot Rods, and who suggested the two should meet his younger brother Mark. Mark had originally planned to become a child psychologist, but in 1975 he left university to relocate to London, eventually forming a mod/punk band called The Reaction. His brother called in a few favours, and in 1977 the band recorded a demo tape for Island Records, including one Hollis original titled 'Talk Talk', which later surfaced on the 1977 Beggars Banquet punk compilation 'Streets'. Island were impressed enough with the demo to offer The Reaction a single deal, with 'I Can't Resist'/'I Am A Case' coming out in 1978, and following the release of the single the band recorded another set of demos in 1979, although shortly after this The Reaction disbanded, and Hollis's brother introduced him to Webb and Harris. The trio immediately clicked and began arranging Hollis's tunes and even writing their own together, and after recruiting keyboardist Simon Brenner, the group coalesced as Talk Talk, after mining their growing roster of new song titles for a name. They had no guitarist, which was a purposeful omission, and after EMI expressed an interest in them, they signed for the label. After recording a number of demos with producer Jimmy Miller, they were assigned Duran Duran producer Colin Thurston to helm their first two singles, one of which was the old Reaction song 'Mirror Man', but now recorded in the spirit of the current new romantic movement, which seemed to be the direction that EMI wanted to push them into. Their debut LP, 'The Party's Over', was indeed a product of its time, defined by contemporary synth pop sensibilities but with an honesty and lyrical depth absent from most other records of the moment, and from that point on the band never looked back. But we are now able to, however, and to hear those 1979 demos, plus their lone single, and their compilation contribution, on this collection of all the existing recordings by The Reaction, some of which later turned up on Talk Talk records in drastically different forms. 

Track listing

01 Caro Lyn
02 Mirror Man
03 Renée
04 I Can't Resist
05 Candy
06 Have You Heard The News
07 Crying In The Rain
08 I Keep On Telling You
09 I Am A Case
10 It's A Question Of Time
11 Talk Talk
12 Souled Out

Thanks to Geof McM for the suggestion