Stream: Talk Time, ‘Dead Weight’

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Talk Time (Photo by Hector Puig)

Talk Time makes music for tough times — lush, sanguine dream-pop with one foot in the glossy ’80s and the other in riffier neo-psychedelia of the past decade and a half. Their 2019 EP “Year of Self” was as much food for thought as it was candy for the ears; it was no surprise to learn, after Talk Time debuted in 2018, that Tears for Fears were a major influence.

The band — built around the braintrust of Edson Choi and Mike Nissen — were waylaid by the pandemic. They were well into tracking their second EP a year ago, and only recently, with February’s livestreamed session from the studio of producer Math Bishop (U2, Two Door Cinema Club, the Killers, Silversun Pickups), has new music begun to emerge.

Out today, “Dead Weight” is their new single. “Musically, the song takes some inspiration from one of our all-time favorite tunes — Prince’s 1999 opener ‘Let’s Get Crazy,’” the duo says. “The track opens with Prince preaching to carpe diem to a rapturous congregation, and to not let the devil (‘elevator’ was his metaphor for the Devil according to His greatness) take us down.

“‘Dead Weight’ is less carpe diem and more let’s learn to deal with the devils within us in order to prevent destruction and extinctions … Which we think works well, because ‘Let’s Get Crazy’ came out in 1982, helped open a decade of excess and decadence, while ‘Dead Weight’ is much more introspective, and is going to be released during a pandemic and social and economic unrest, and reflects the constant existential crises we’re going through as individuals and as a species right now.”

Talk Time’s new EP is due to arrive in August.

||| Stream: “Dead Weight”

||| Previously: Quarantunes with Talk Time, live at Echo Park Rising 2019, live at the Bootleg, “Year of Self” EP interview, “Desperate Weather,” “Year of Self” (single)