talking heads fans: just WHAT is wrong w/ "speaking in tongues"?!?

Speaking in Tongues [Sire, 1983]
With Eno departed, the polyrhythms no longer seem so portentous--this funk is quirkily comfortable, like the Byrne-produced B-52's or the three-piece of Byrne's earlier primitivist period. Unfortunately, the polyrhythms no longer seem so meaningful, either. Though God knows there's no rock and roll rule that says playfulness can't signify all by itself, the disjoint opacity of the lyrics fails to conceal Byrne's confusion about what it all means. Yet side two lights me up nevertheless, sandwiching the purest anticapitalist song he's ever written and the purest prolove song he's ever written around two pieces of typically ironic-optimistic futurism. A-

Listen, I like Speaking In Tongues, and there's something great about it. But there's also something distincly facile about this record -- and to be honest, it's the drums. Especially given that you're talking about a band that bases everything on the rhythm, that's a problem -- a big problem. I mean, we're talking about a band that, regardless of whether you think it reached that point, aspired to transcendence. Facile don't cut it.

But Speaking in Tongues had an impressive amount of hits for one record.

Actually, "Little Creatures" is a much better record.

those are the hits on LIttle Creatures! they're also the only good songs on it from what I remember.

The energy that comes through in the live version seems a bit absent: especially on 'Burning Down The House', 'Making Flippy Floppy' and 'Girlfriend Is Better'.

Lost classic: Pull Up The Roots.
Especially on the 5.1 remix re-release.

I really must buy these remixed albums.

SO GOOD

Pull Up The Roots and Wild Wild Gravity are really good cod-reggae things.

the 5.1 version of this really improves it. fucking amazing.

also if we're talking - talking heads getting shitty; let's go for the real targets...true stories for
a start :-(

It's clattery and unformed. "Burning Down the House" is great, the next three songs are pretty good, the rest don't really work very well for me. The songs came to life live, on record they're flat. Honestly, I'm more likely to pull out True Stories than this one.

The Staples Singers cover of "Slippery People" is better than the Heads version.

"This Must Be the Place" = one of their great songs, and oddly the soft-funk-reggae music and production really work for it--or did until the song was used as a yuppie home-decoration soundtrack in Wall Street, at which point I began agreeing with this thread... The problem for me was layering: That song should have stayed with the bare bones of its funky intro rather than pile on the harmonies and other incidental parts. See "Road to Nowhere," though I don't mind its end as much.

Great cover though. I wore this album as a t-shirt.

I just put this on for the first time in about 25 years, and I swear, I have never been transported in time and place quite so effectively as feeling like I am back on the school bus or in the high school commons room as listening to this album. It's astonishing, how musical memory gets coded quite so precisely.

Also, it is about 10x as good as I remember it. I don't know if my tastes have grown since I was 15 or whatever, or I am just able to do more "influence"-spotting or if memory is playing tricks on me or what. (And are Little Creatures and True Stories as bad as I remember them, or will memory be kinder to them, too? Ooh, Stop Making Sense is on Spotify, too, LOL high school)

Little Creatures is pretty great beyond the overexposure of the singles imo

actually it's pretty great full stop i just never need to hear "Road to Nowhere" ever again.

Yeah, I pretty much feel that about most TH singles, overexposure. I was v v tempted to skip Burning Down The House, too, but in context it was great.

(We shall see if I can stomach Road to Nowhere, And She Was and Wild Wild Life or if they send me screaming)

But basically... Making Flippy Floppy! Girlfriend Is Better! Swamp!

this is a good album but it's a little rigid? i much prefer the stop making sense versions of most of the songs. lusher and looser. but this is the only place to get "moon rocks", so.

I know (and loved) Stop Making Sense, but the studio versions being stiffer and weirder and more awkward is kind of what I like about them.

album gets a lot of points for containing the line

ALL THAT BLOOD
WILL NEVER COVER THAT MESS

Remain In Light is a huge achievement on a technical and conceptual level, but this is TH's strongest collection of songs. The only complaint is that the Stop Making Sense versions are largely better.

Tina Weymouth single handedly made me cave in and learn to play the bass.

The only complaint is that the Stop Making Sense versions are largely better.

― This Is... The Police (dog latin)

don't think this is true at all. prefer the album versions in almost every case.

though i can't remember where, i recently posted something about how unfairly overlooked this album is, relative to fear of music and especially remain in light. it's at least as good as those two acknowledged classics, if a bit less sonically adventurous. song for song, i think it's their best and most immediately appealing album.

it sounds crazy but Todd Edwards does a really bangin remix of "burnin down the house"

"Stay Up Late" on Little Creatures is so awesome

Is 'Moon Rocks' the least talked about TH song that is really great?

Little Creatures is actually mostly great, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed most of it - but I could barely get halfway through True Stories, which is as bad as I remember it.

It's also NAGL wandering about Croydon making David Byrne prehistorical bird noises "A-RAWRK CAW!"

Listening to Stop Making Sense now for the first time since high school, and, erm, I don't like it anywhere as much as I still like the studio albums. It's kind of blighted by bad 80s sounds in a way that the studio stuff just sounds completely strange and timeless.

(Though lord knows I saw that film half a dozen times, in the cinema and everything.)

"The Lady Don't Mind" and "Television Man" by themselves are worth the LC read.

It's kind of blighted by bad 80s sounds in a way that the studio stuff just sounds completely strange and timeless.

iirc, Frantz' drum tracks were replaced by a drum machine for the soundtrack album. The 1999 reissue restored his original drumming.

Drum sounds were in a twilight world in 1983, caught between the gated drum sound perfected by Bowie, Gabriel,, Collins, et al and programmed tracks. The studio "Girlfriend is Better" is a case i point.

I've never been able to get into "Little Creatures," not even really the singles, but I love everything about "Speaking In Tongues."

Do not like Little Creatures or True Stories at all but I really like Naked, like it's maybe my fourth favourite.

SMS kind of needs to have the film being played to be fully appreciated.

I'm the same. I dig Speaking in Tongues but Little Creatures just alludes me. I love "And She Was" but get bored quickly after.

Listening to Stop Making Sense now for the first time since high school, and, erm, I don't like it anywhere as much as I still like the studio albums. It's kind of blighted by bad 80s sounds in a way that the studio stuff just sounds completely strange and timeless.

otfm (i haven't heard the 99 reissue). loved stop making sense as a movie, but the soundtrack album was never a favorite. prefer the performances on the name of this band.

little creatures is patchy but fun, and pretty much the last gasp. could never get into naked or true stories, though the former has a few great tracks.

I also love "Naked." So for me the band is pretty much batting 1000, including the live album and those handful of unreleased tracks ... as long as I skip "Little Creatures" and "True Stories," which I do.

Oh, and love "Stop Making Sense" the movie, never listened to the soundtrack.

I listened to the soundtrack album over and over in high school, though. It's not like it didn't work for me without the movie when I was a teenager.

I really like Little Creatures but that might have something to do with it being the only Talking Heads album I had for a very long time. Rediscovered it recently via Little Creatures/True Stories 2CD reissue thingy, my cassette had been languishing in a box unlistened for well over a decade before that. I'd never heard True Stories before but didn't grab me at all.

those bonus tracks on the recent remasters are really ace

I used to play Stop Making Sense on repeat and I've still never seen the movie

Wow, that's hard to believe?! You should totally see the movie!!

Yeah watching that movie was what got me interested in them in the first place. Must have watched it ten times through since.

In today's "revisiting teenage obsessions" news, the Catherine Wheel soundtrack remains as mind-blowingly great as when I first took it out of the local library, aged 14 or something.

Funny, I just took it out for the first time in years, too, after being reminded of it in that Eno bio. Him and Byrne were thick as thieves for a few years, but then - boom - total burnout.

I've moved on to My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts which I can't remember as well so I suspect it wasn't as good. But The Catherine Wheel is one of those things that might be even better than I remember it.

I guess it's more that The Catherine Wheel is dance music - i.e. it was actually written to dance to - and still works as such.

i was also wondering if MYitBoG wasn't as good as i'd remembered but nope, still amazing

Sorry, I got distracted by The Knee Plays, which was how I got into all this stuff in the first place, oddly enough.

it's all about "Big Blue Plymouth."

What A Day That Was -> Big Blue Plymouth -> Light Bath is just one of the most beautiful sequences of music I have ever heard.

My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts is fucking amazing, particularly for the time... What was it, '81? We've barely progressed since then

ha see THAT innovative, groundbreaking album bores me. The first three tracks excite me, then it's like "There's a whole album of this?"

I've never heard of The Catherine Wheel. Or seen / heard SMS. Think. Own the late on CD though.

Catherine Wheel is my most slept-on key-era TH album. Sick, DJP, what are you doing not watching SMS right now? Go watch it! Go!