Talking Heads - Sp eak in gi n To ngu es
Talking Heads
Sp eak in gi n To ngu es
1983 Sire/Warner Bros. Records
Produced by Talking Heads
Personnel:
David Byrne, Jerry Harrison, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth
Additional Personnel:
Bernie Worrell, Wally Badarou, Nona Hendryx, Dolette Macdonald, Shankar, others
This was the first major mainstream success for Talking Heads; a veritable smash with Burning Down the House (their first top 10 hit) and the album rock radio staples Girlfriend is Better and Slippery People. They had worked with Brian Eno on their early efforts but this was a more internal affair, with mixing handled by the late Alex Sadkin (Simply Red, Grace Jones, Duran Duran), whose sound is evident here.
Full of Byrnes lyrical nonlinearity and a bouncy delivery that was part white-soul preacherman in revelatory ecstasy and part propellerhead nerdy outbursts. Making ample use of swampy blues figures and bubbly world beat offsets --a little African Highlife here, some Caribbean accents there-- sets the album as a sparse, funky effort with strident pop sensibility. The dub on I Get Wild/Wild Gravity and warped disco of Moon Rocks do not feel out of place in an album with the Delta blues informed Swamp and the very very New Wave of This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody). The use of versatile instrumentalists and vocalists like Bernie Worrell (Parliament-Funkadelic) and Dolette Macdonald (Sting, Joni Mitchell) are the spices that really make this weird musical gumbo stay consistently fun and interesting. Everything sounds like it belongs, but no two songs sound alike.
At their heart, Talking Heads were reformed post-punks with ridiculously Catholic tastes and the ambition to experiment without any hesitation, and almost always ending in successful results. That speaks loud and clear.
Sp eak in gi n To ngu es
1983 Sire/Warner Bros. Records
Produced by Talking Heads
Personnel:
David Byrne, Jerry Harrison, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth
Additional Personnel:
Bernie Worrell, Wally Badarou, Nona Hendryx, Dolette Macdonald, Shankar, others
This was the first major mainstream success for Talking Heads; a veritable smash with Burning Down the House (their first top 10 hit) and the album rock radio staples Girlfriend is Better and Slippery People. They had worked with Brian Eno on their early efforts but this was a more internal affair, with mixing handled by the late Alex Sadkin (Simply Red, Grace Jones, Duran Duran), whose sound is evident here.
Full of Byrnes lyrical nonlinearity and a bouncy delivery that was part white-soul preacherman in revelatory ecstasy and part propellerhead nerdy outbursts. Making ample use of swampy blues figures and bubbly world beat offsets --a little African Highlife here, some Caribbean accents there-- sets the album as a sparse, funky effort with strident pop sensibility. The dub on I Get Wild/Wild Gravity and warped disco of Moon Rocks do not feel out of place in an album with the Delta blues informed Swamp and the very very New Wave of This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody). The use of versatile instrumentalists and vocalists like Bernie Worrell (Parliament-Funkadelic) and Dolette Macdonald (Sting, Joni Mitchell) are the spices that really make this weird musical gumbo stay consistently fun and interesting. Everything sounds like it belongs, but no two songs sound alike.
At their heart, Talking Heads were reformed post-punks with ridiculously Catholic tastes and the ambition to experiment without any hesitation, and almost always ending in successful results. That speaks loud and clear.
posted by theloniusfunk at 11:46 PM
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