Talking Heads- Classic or Dud?

xxp the "Please Kill Me" guy:

Blah, blah, blah. Even-whiter-inside writers white-guilt-tripping on white-guy bands trying to sound black.

I have an altogether another narrative: to me, Byrne and the Heads really come into their own on the last and best one, 'Naked', and the subsequent Byrne solo records in the '90s, where he gradually becomes both a better, rightfully soulful singer, and a better, fine-as-hell songwriter, often in the league with Paul Simon.

'Remain in Light' and 'Bush of Ghosts' remain in-teresting, but 'Naked' ('The Heads go African, vol. 2') sounds lived-in, and exciting, and life-affirming (while often scary as well).

Now that's an opinion!

Goddamn these 5.1 downmixes from maresnest of the SMS movie are fantastic

I don’t have anything against him but don’t know if I’d refer to The Hound as a “notable writer.”

sandor clegane?

fwiw my David Byrne intro: Rei Momo, specifically "Make Believe Mambo."

i haven't listened to rei momo in a good 30 years, it'd be interesting to revisit

X-post - haven’t listened to the Naked album in a bit but it definitely has its positive moments.

Speaking In Tongues is the peak of music

I wouldnt say Naked is their best but side 1 of Naked is one of my favorite TH things to listen to

For example: I hear 'Ruby Dear' or 'Cool Water' as kind of thematic sequels to 'Listening Wind', but whereas the latter sounds a bit patronisingly detached to me (granted, it's a period feature), those dark points of the Naked album actually feel dangerous; Byrne's unhinged delivery on them is awesome.

I like better passionate Byrne than 'idiot-glee' Byrne. I think too much has been made of his asperger-manchild persona to the detriment of when he really has something straightforward to say and he says it as passionately as any normally sensitive person.

Also, to not make it all about Byrne, all the band's playing on Naked is sprightly, and delightful. Many memorable Tina basslines, and Chris - especially good on brushes - shows he's not the on-the-one one-trick pony one* could have been excused for mistaking him for. (*pardon the sound-puns!)
And for the (epic) "The Facts of Life" they get to shuffle instruments kind of like they'd done for "This Must Be The Place" before!

I've always thought "Mr. Jones" was a single too, on the basis that it got plays on Italian national radio at the time the album got out, but apparently that wasn't the case. If they ever happened to reissue it for some coming anniversary, they've got the promo video sorted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rGEAsfhoeY

I like the undercurrent of menace on the second side: "Listening Wind" and "The Overload" for the Columbia House crowd. But I can barely distinguish instruments; it's a synth pop album with occasional band touches.

i agree that byrne reaches a new level as a singer by naked. vocally, i always heard SMS as kind of his last hurrah as 'high strung dada yelping guy'. you can hear him trying out new approaches on true stories and little creatures, getting more comfortable with crooning and different deliveries. then with naked he seems like hes in control of a whole new toolbox, doing all kinds of different stuff that he wouldnt/couldnt have done a few years prior

Loving the Naked reappraisals. This was easily my #1 record when it came out and for a long time after. I still have a lot of affection for it.

The reception for this has always fascinated me: they went from their commercial peak and TIME Magazine cover artists a year and a half earlier to being redundant and irrelevant in '88.

― Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Gotta be because of Little Creatures and True Stories

I love "Blind", but their sound had been drained of power and texture by 1988. Like in "The Facts of Life", which is obviously meant to start as a grinding industrial nightmare in its opening minutes, but actually sounds like a cartoon.
My favourite Byrne record post-Remain in Light is uh-oh, the songs, lyrics, arrangements and melodies really connect.

Hard for me to think of an album that has a greater disparity of quality in its two sides than Naked

yeah got a lot more time for Naked than Little Creatures or True Stories which lack the things I like about TH

The message of True Stories ("Aren't suburbanites cute?") hasn't aged well either,

My favourite Byrne record post-Remain in Light is uh-oh, the songs, lyrics, arrangements and melodies really connect.

I prefer the eponymous follow-up for, I guess, its Proper Mature Songwriting, but his guitar playing was fierce on Uh-Oh. That tour was fabulous, still a top five show.

Based on my tastes, I should have liked that 1994 album, but it did nothing for me. uh-oh was helped by its humour.

"Butt Naked" and "Back in the Box" though

Can't remember the last time I listened to Naked. I'm willing to give it another chance at least, which is absolutely not true of Little Creatures.

"Blind" is structurally interesting; basically a soul song but with little bits of Afrobeat and salsa thrown in here and there. The horns are better than, say, the horns on a Phil Collins album. Byrne's hoarse voice, though... he sounds like he heard Rain Dogs and nobody told him he couldn't pull that off.

A friend of mine who liked the record more than I did (and who might still be buying Byrne albums) regarded "Cool Water" as one of the great "final songs" of a band's career, with its apocalyptic message.

"Mr. Jones" sounds like it was slowed down by the engineer. It should be maybe 5-10 bpm faster than it is.

"Totally Nude" is a mix of things I like (Hawaiian guitar, juju guitar — this song is massively indebted to King Sunny Ade) and things I hate (Caribbean/soca rhythm). Would be better without the synths and steel drums, too.

The message of True Stories ("Aren't suburbanites cute?") hasn't aged well either,

Haven't watched the movie or listened to it in some time, but I remember it being a little more nuanced/weird than that. Maybe I'm projecting but I always think of Byrne's attitude on a project like TS or a song like "The Big Country" as really having it both ways: he's critical of suburbia or whatever part of conventional life he's observing, but also just fascinated enough by it to hold back from pure mockery. Like he acknowledges that he doesn't get it, and therefore can't partake but also can't fully judge those who do. Part of the whole Aspergersy-alien thing, I guess.

Even the repeating chorus line in "The Big Country" - "I wouldn't live there if you paid me" - I jump back and forth between imagining him unironically identifying with the narrator, and being critical of the narrator's condescension. But like I said, I may just be projecting.

Sure, there's a lot of subtext there, but I can't imagine Byrne (or a comparable contemporary cultural figure) not getting harshly criticized for making his red-state satire so gentle if such a film came out now.

ha, I think I misunderstood your original comment. in that sense, yes, I agree it hasn't aged well.

i never imagined that he identified with the narrator of the big country, i always heard it as a randy newman-style character study of a pinhead. by the end of the song he admits he's miserable, while its clear to the audience that the people hes looking down on know something he doesnt. it even ends with a joke at the narrator's expense: "its not even worth talking about those people down there" (after talking about them nonstop.) plus if the big country is meant unironically then you have to believe that "dont worry about the government" is meant ironically, which i cant buy

"Don't Worry About the Government" is in the same category! I hear it both ways. The song is able to skirt irony, but then the title...

The title + the swell of music that comes in on the final "don't worry 'bout meeeeee" at the end of each chorus

The "Silent Majority"/Mr. Businessman archetype that he explores in that song (and others) doesn't really exist anymore either, does it? MAGA certainly worry about the government!

Don't you live in Ontario?

Well, Doug Ford's Conservatives are also trying to dismantle government. "Conservative" no longer means "apolitical/satisfied with the status quo".

Half of the greater Ottawa area is probably described by "Don't Worry About the Government".xp

We had a long convo about The Big Country lyric a few years back (maybe on this thread)

I just don't think that this kind of satirical lyric:

Check out Mr. Businessman
He bought some wild, wild life
On the way to the stock exchange

reads as sufficiently critical these days; now we'd have to know the content of Mr. Businessman's investment portfolio and who was exploited to get that wealth.
I'm not saying that Byrne was naive about these things at the time, but this Mr. Normal character appears again in his Talking Heads lyrics (and persona?), and it reads differently now.

Same with Ray Davies.

"Don't Worry" isn't about conservative ideologues; it's about content suburbanites and civil servants, whom I see everyday.

Also, Doug Ford p much ran without a platform (other than "buck a beer") in the only election he has won so far!xps

xxxxxposts

The only song on Naked I'd bin wasn't on the original LP anyway, and it kind of sounds like a B-side ("Bill"). I love both sides of the record equally, if differently. "Mummy Daddy" is a nice thematic sequel to the "middle America" era. Seriously, just reminding myself of these songs, they're so great lyrically - to say nothing of the arrangements and musicianship involved.

Yes, "Cool Water" is really a stunning (as in, it stuns you in your tracks) final song. Although "Sax + Violins" is a marvel as well.*

*Does anyone know why there are only Byrne and Harrison in Wenders' "S+V" video? At the time I thought it had to be some conceptual sh*t I couldn't quite get, but it could have also been the Byrne vs Tina+Chris rift kicking in heavily by that time.

I loved "Make Believe Mambo" and the Rei Momo era as well. I liked Uh-oh well enough (the heavy-rotated singles/videos were absolutely rad) but the keyboards on it are often preset-cheesy. That album seemed to me like a retreat'n'regroup album after the previous one.

My favourite solo Byrne albums/eras are the eponymous one from 1994 and, probably even more, the follow-up, Feelings (1997). Both albums are, to me, prime examples of a middle-aged artist tapping into the zeitgeist as successfully as 'Outside'/'Earthling'-era Bowie did. And both tours were awesome - musically, and the Feeling one conceptually as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUiUx4c6Imk

The version of "Help Me Somebody" on that Sessions at W 54th video is incredible. Byrne does the preacher's voice.

my take on byrne is that his cool detachment brought out out and celebrated e a hyper-real version of the american striver, which jibes with the band's success and the 80s generally. i think there's less criticism going on in what he did than i used to.

and honestly i don't feel the need to go back to talking heads and haven't for a few years, not enough alterity for me in what they did.

See, I don't hear detachment, cool or otherwise, in his early shrill punctuative vocals -- I hear deep anxiety.

affected or not, doesn't change things

yeah I immediately thought of "Cities"

Sometimes, he's a little freaked out.

also, in my judgment, detachment is the posture of the defeated, not the winners.