Imagine Justin Timberlake making an album that critics can truly appreciate -- not just those who embrace his current vapid pop songs in desperate displays of ironic, negative reinforcement -- but those who appreciate real artistry and boundary breaking. If that seems improbable, there is precedent in the work of Mark Hollis.

Hollis led the British boy band Talk Talk, most well known on this side of the Atlantic for its hit "It's My Life." The band's early efforts are disposable pop, but it didn't take long for Hollis and producer Tim Friese-Greene to steer things in a more abstract direction. The band's last two discs, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, are classics of avant pop, mixing atmospheric arrangements, hushed vocals and restrained, jazzy playing to create something new. It was a sound years before its time, leading the way for artists like Tindersticks and, more recently, Shearwater.

Those discs tanked commercially, however, and the group disbanded. Seven years later, Hollis surfaced with his self-titled solo debut, a disc that used Laughing Stock as a launching point, or rather, as a framework from which things could be stripped further. The disc's first track, "The Colour of Spring," begins with 30 seconds of silence, and things get only marginally more dynamic from there. But the result of such hushed performance is that the songs are reduced to their very essence, and these are songs that bear up under such unadorned presentation.

These eight songs are long -- only one is less than four minutes, four are six or longer -- giving each time to open up and evolve over the course of their running time. Most start quietly, with a single instrument setting the tone. Only "The Gift" could be said to have much of a beat, and even that drives a song built on minimalist acoustic guitar and vocals.

An artistic statement like this doesn't just happen overnight; witness the seven years between this and its predecessor. Still, as the 10-year anniversary of its release looms, with no word about a follow-up, one wonders if Hollis is spent or simply has said all he has to say. "At the point when you finish an album, the last thing in the world I could think of doing is start writing another one," he told The Wire in 1998. "At the point where you've made it, that says what you want to say at that point in time, so it's not like the next day you can begin another one."

If Hollis does have new things to say, he couldn't pick a better time than the present. Assuming he would take too large a stylistic leap, it seems as if the rest of the world is starting to catch up.

MP3: The Gift
MP3: The Colour of Spring

Labels: music, OOTS