page_title: Laughing Stock
section_title: Release
hierarchical_section_title: Laughing Stock / Release
caption_attribution_description: Hahoe Folk Village in Andong, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea.
context_page_description: Laughing Stock is the fifth and final studio album by British band Talk Talk, released in 1991. Following their previous release Spirit of Eden, bassist Paul Webb left the group, which reduced Talk Talk to the duo of singer/multi-instrumentalist Mark Hollis and drummer Lee Harris. Talk Talk then acrimoniously left EMI and signed to the jazz-based Verve Records, and recorded Laughing Stock at London's Wessex Sound Studios with producer Tim Friese-Greene from September 1990 to April 1991.
  Like Spirit of Eden the album featured improvised instrumentation from a large ensemble of musicians. The demanding sessions were marked by Hollis' perfectionist tendencies and desire to create a suitable recording atmosphere. Engineer Phill Brown stated that the album, like its predecessor, was "recorded by chance, accident, and hours of trying every possible overdub idea." The band split up following its release, effectively making Laughing Stock their last official release.
  The album received praise from most critics. Pitchfork named it the eleventh best album of the 1990s, saying it "makes its own environment and becomes more than the sum of its sounds."
context_section_description: When the band delivered Laughing Stock to Verve, Polydor were purported "gutted", wondering how they would be able to sell such an uncommercial record. Sutherland recalled that "the first time I heard the record was at a dinner given for retailers by the record company at The New Serpentine Gallery. It was an embarrassingly desperate attempt over cocktails to convince store owners that they should stock a record which, the company was trying to infer, stood for quality over likely quantity of sales. Nobody knew where to look as Hollis' muted blues confessional purposely disintegrated into shivering feedback. A similar farce was, apparently, held in a Paris planetarium. Hollis attended both playbacks and survived. He says the Paris one wasn't too bad because, when the lights went out, it was close to the perfect way to listen to his music – with your eyes closed, watching your own mind movies. He didn't stick around in London, though – he had no desire to see people's reactions. He says he's proud of the record and, seeing as it wasn't made for other people, their opinions don't bother him."
  Hollis denied that there was any problem with Polydor, saying "the whole structure of the deal we have with this record company is understanding how we work. I suppose because it's on Verve some people will think we've been stuck under 'Jazz' but what on earth does jazz mean? It's such a vague term, isn't it? Without any question there are certain areas of jazz that are extremely important to me. Ornette Coleman is an example. But jazz as a term is as widely used and abused as soul – it no longer means what it should mean. Jazz has almost been bastardised to such an extent that, if you've got a saxophone on a record, it's jazz, which is a terrifying idea. It's like, where would you ever place Can? To me Tago Mago is an extremely important album that has elements of jazz in it, but I would never call it jazz. Basically, the deal is that I promise to give them the best album I can. I think they have options across four albums which, at the pace we work, is the next 12 years. What more can you say?"
  Verve Records released the album on 16 September 1991. No official singles or music videos were released to promote the album. Nonetheless, a limited edition box set entitled After the Flood / New Grass / Ascension Day was released in France, containing the aforementioned three songs from the album, with the former edited down as an "outtake", and two unreleased B-sides ("Stump", "5:09"). In the United States, a recording of an interview with Mark Hollis entitled Mark Hollis Talks About Laughing Stock was distributed on cassette. Despite the lack of traditional promotion, the album reached number 26 on the UK Album Chart, and stayed on the chart for two weeks.
  Unlike Talk Talk's other albums, the album has never been remastered for CD, but on 11 October 2011, Ba Da Bing Records released a remastered version of Laughing Stock on vinyl, marking the first time that the album has been issued on vinyl in the United States. Pitchfork commented that the remastering on this re-release sounds "amazing, as good as the album's ever sounded, in any format. Which is crucial, because on some level Talk Talk's later albums are all about sound. How startling, isolated moments of sound, or a formless wash of sound, can wring emotions out of listeners as powerfully as any conventional melody."
caption: Mark Hollis requested that a tree of birds feature in the album cover to connect the album to Spirit of Eden.
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