23/03/2008

Speaking In Tongues

I kinda forgot about my Talking Heads round up, so let's bring it back and finish it off, starting here...

My favourite period of Talking Heads is the Stop Making Sense era. Not only is that my favourite of their albums, it's also one of the best films of all time. I must have seen it 12 times at least. So I guess it makes sense that the album recorded at that time is my favourite of all their studio albums. It's often overlooked, although for good reasons. It isn't produced by Brian Eno, it doesn't have Psycho Killer or Once In Lifetime on it and it was recorded in the eighties when everyone thinks of them as the quintessential New York seventies group. However it possesses possibly the finest opening quartet of songs in all of rock (Burning Down The House, Making Flippy Floppy, Girlfriend Is Better, Slippery People) and the finest song David Byrne ever wrote (This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)). It a perfectly realised balance between pop, punk, funk and afrobeat, one which neither they or anyone else has bettered.

Two Note Swivel (unfinished outtake)

Burning Down the House (alternate version)



The 23rd of March is the day of the meteorologists.

3 comments:

David N said...

Yeah. I love Speaking In Tongues. Is lovely.

Oddly, given how I often use him as an example - nay, exemplar - of the whole "artists decline with time" theory, I think the best song David Byrne ever wrote is "Glass, Concrete & Stone" from a few years ago. Just a simple and beautiful song. Anybody could play it and do a good job. whereas many (most?) of the masterpieces he wrote for the Heads are, I would imagine, just about uncoverable. Successfully, at any rate.

hf,c,.jgvkhbj,. said...

That is a fantastic song, but then I would say that, wouldn't I? I think Naive Melody is very coverable too. Have you heard the Arcade Fire version?

Anonymous said...

banda das melhores!.DDD