Here we go on Talking Heads and David Byrne. I did consider throwing in Tom Tom Club and Jerry Harrison too, but their Spotify coverage is, well, spotty, and it would have added a considerable number of albums to the list. Funnily enough 'My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts' is wholly credited to Eno on Spotify. I've missed out soundtracks and live albums (since I've never included them for any other artist and I'll pick up Stop Making Sense on the live album sequence anyway).TH Talking Heads 77 16/09/1977
TH More Songs About Buildings and Food 14/07/1978
TH Fear Of Music 03/08/1979
DB My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts 04/08/1979
TH Remain in Light 08/10/1980
TH Speaking In Tongues 31/05/1983
TH Little Creatures 10/06/1985
TH True Stories 07/10/1986
TH Naked 15/03/1988
DB Rei Momo 25/09/1989
DB Uh-Oh 03/03/1992
DB David Byrne 24/05/1994
DB Feelings 17/06/1997
DB Look Into The Eyeball 08/05/2001
DB Grown Backwards 16/03/2004
DB Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (with Brian Eno) 18/08/2008
DB Here Lies Love (with Norman Cook) 05/04/2010
DB Love This Giant (with St. Vincent) 10/09/2012
DB American Utopia 09/03/2018
TALKING HEADS 77Released: September 16th 1977
Talking Heads
Here's a jumping off point you might not have been expecting. When bland, cleancut Irish boys Westlife do a key change they famously rise from their 5 stools, just so you know what's coming. Not so David Byrne, who might chuck in a key change at any point in any song, usually mid-line and sometimes twice in the same phrase. If he took the Westlife approach to performance he might be twitching up and down like a jack-in-the-box (oh, hang on?).
Talking Heads seem to be built largely on Byrne's vocal unpredictability, and when you listen to the underlying melodies they are really pretty conventional, at least to the modern ear. Back then they were very likely perceived as completely off the wall in every respect. Let's put this in context. In 77 the Pistols and their ilk were swinging a wrecking ball of conventional rock and roll dressed up with faux-anger at the rock elite, Bowie was mucking around in Berlin with Eno, the Stones were trying to live up to their early 70's run of classic albums and the ex-Beatles were all pretty much marking time. So Talking Heads must have sounded quite groundbreaking, which you can't deny that they were.
However, having listened to this a few times, I'd say that it may be original but it doesn't have a great deal of breadth. If you like 'Psycho Killer', you'll probably like the rest of it, cos it's not all that different. But 'Uh-Oh, Love Comes To Town', 'No Compassion' and 'The Book I Read' are at least as good and interesting as P.K. and the simpering sing-song chorus of 'Don't Worry About The Government' is oddly compelling. The trademark Byrne "Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ah" turns up in 'First Week/Last Week' and is characteristic of his kind of alternative scatting. 'Psycho Killer' lends itself to Byrne's unhinged delivery, proving that there's nothing so essentially psychotic as speaking in French. Extras on special editions provided by Spotify include 'Love -> Building On Fire', which proves that Talking Heads are also the most innovative users of punctuation in their song titles.
Uh-Oh, Love Comes To Town
New Feeling
Tentative Decisions
Happy Day
Who Is It?
No Compassion
The Book I Read
Don't Worry About The Government
First Week/Last Week
Pscyho Killer
Pulled Up
MORE SONGS ABOUT BUILDINGS AND FOODReleased: 14th July 1978
Talking Heads
For a band that are supposed to be 'arty', they're quite good at a pop tune aren't they? I mean, sure, Byrne's vocals are quirky and the lyrics are fairly oblique, but catchiness is not in short supply. This was the first Eno produced album, which makes it even more surprising for me, since I tend to associate him with more challenging work - although I suppose I shouldn't if I thought for any length of time about Roxy Music. 'The Girl Wants To Be With The Girls', for example, has a killer, insistent chorus. And although I just accused them of being rather difficult when it comes to The Words, the song 'Found A Job' is quite an odd, intriguing setup with it's story of Judy and Bob deciding that it's much more interesting to conduct their lives as if it were a TV show, rather than just watching a TV show. I guess that it might also be saying that Bob and Judy have actually just decided to lead separate lives, Judy 'inventing situations' in the bathroom while Bob roams the streets 'looking for locations', but that bleak/weird ambiguity is almost certainly intentional.
A feature of Talking Heads songs is that they often start with a 'Hey!', 'Okay!' or 'Let's Go' from Byrne. Counting in is for squares, but you imagine that Tina, Chris and Jerry had to be on their toes in order to all start at the same time. Elsewhere it's probable that the lyrics are simply created to follow the tune, like on 'Stay Hungry', which also has fusion of tight funk guitar jabs and a woozy synth, that really shouldn't work, but, well you can guess whether I think it does or not.
I didn't realize that 'Take Me To The River' was a cover of an Al Green song, or maybe I did but had forgotten. Talking Heads make it completely their own and those keyboards dip and sway in headache-inducing ways at the end. The last track is 'The Big Country'. David muses as he gazes from an airplane window about the lives of the people who occupy the landscape below. He doesn't fancy it much, presumably life as a twitchy, avant-garde rock star with a sensible haircut is enough for him. Mind you he ends up sounding like he's not all that happy with the life he has got so just starts making "Goo-goo, ga-ga-ga" sounds instead.
Thank You For Sending Me An Angel
With Our Love
The Good Thing
Warning Sign
The Girl Wants To Be With The Girls
Found A Job
Artists Only
I'm Not in Love
Stay Hungry
Take Me to the River
The Big Country
FEAR OF MUSICReleased: 3rd August 1979
Talking Heads
A lot of this album is familiar to me, although I've never owned it. I can only put this down to prolonged and relentless exposure during my student years. The guilty parties know who they are. But y'know, maybe they were on to something, while I was wallowing in self-pity and thinking that Fish out of Marillion was the prophet of our times, I should probably have been lending a more sympathetic ear to Talking Heads accessible off-the-wallness.
It starts on a fairly upbeat note with the African-influenced 'I Zimbra'. There's quite a lot of scratchy, Nile Rodgers style guitar grooves as a backdrop to Byrne's vocals, but things soon descend to a darker place. He seems even more high-strung on this one than usual and a lot of the singing resembles a kind of manic mantra, such as on 'Cities'. 'Life During Wartime' is here, and while I'm familiar with the more attention grabbing lines: "We dress like students, we dress like housewives; in a suit and a tie; I changed my hairstyle, so many times now; Don't know what I look like", I hadn't paid attention to the overall theme until now, which does seem to be describing more of a post apocalyptic scenario than wartime. It also fades while Byrne is still singing, like he's just going to carry on and on forever.
Elsewhere he's dark and doomy on 'Memories Can't Wait' and paranoid and dreamy with 'Air' - my favourite on this I think. 'Heaven' comes close to being a country ballad and equates paradise with grey boredom. I guess they're saying Heaven = Purgatory. I'm not sure what he means by his extended rant against 'Animals'. It could be that he's taking the persona of some kind of sociopath who views everyone else as an animal, or maybe he just doesn't like animals very much. The closing 'Drugs' is claustrophobic and unsettling. It seems clear that the album has a theme and it's fairly clearly indicated in the title.
Much of it seems to be about fear and paranoia, mistrust in the world around you, but also about getting stuck in a repetitive loop. The black, uniform, steel tread plate of the cover suggests hard, dull, functional uniformity.
I Zimbra
Mind
Paper
Cities
Life During Wartime
Memories Can't Wait
Air
Heaven
Animals
Electric Guitar
Drugs
REMAIN IN LIGHTReleased: 8th October 1980
Talking Heads
It seems much more abstract than what has gone before, and that wasn't precisely the most mundane music you're ever likely to listen to. Byrne begins to take on the persona of a kind of evangelical dadaist preacher on some of these songs, haranguing the listener with his rhythmic mantras. It's most obvious in 'Once In A Lifetime'. Remember the video? A classic from the early days of the artform. Dave stands there in suit and bowtie, looking fraught and sweaty and throwing jerky shapes and moves including The Stop Sign (sometimes called The Declaration Of Allegiance), The Two-Handed Stroking The Kitty, The Screw Your Head Into The Floor, The Shots To The Body and The Karate Chop Of The Forearm. Here it is:
In fact the entire album marks a forward step from the introversion and paranoia of Fear Of Music I think. There's more of the quasi-religious declaiming on the opening 'Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)'. Second track 'Cross-Eyed And Painless' is a clear ancestor of the 'Wordy Rappinghood', just replace "words" with "facts" and there are whole sections which are pretty much the same. Background reading suggests that to combat writer's block, Byrne resorted to a more stream-of-consciousness approach. Certainly most of the songs boil down to him chanting against an improvised groove laid down by the rest of the band, 'Houses In Motion' is a pretty good example. But that just seems to make them all the more hypnotic and compelling. It's almost like an audio illusion, these songs sound complex but they are actually made up of only a few basic components.
Also, if you need evidence that the problems of perceived American imperialism is a not new one, we get the haunting, and not in the least unsympathetic 'Listening Wind', in which a terrorist called Mojique carries out a bombing of Americans in his country. It's not presented as angry, or violent, but sad and mournful as if it's a regretful necessity.
It all finishes on an equally downbeat note, 'The Overload' has Byrne's murmured vocal over a rumbling dirge. The GeniusLyrics website suggests it's an attempt to emulate Joy Division but without the benefit of actually ever having heard the ray of sunlight that was Ian Curtis. If true, they did a pretty good job, working just from written descriptions.
Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)
Crosseyed And Painless
The Great Curve
Once In A Lifetime
Houses In Motion
Seen And Not Seen
Listening Wind
The Overload
MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTSReleased: February 1981
Brian Eno and David Byrne
My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts is one of those albums that you frequently hear in interviews and conversations about music. At least it is in the ones I listen to. It's clearly considered to be groundbreaking and it's easy to see why, although an album as reputedly influential as this always requires a little more research to avoid the risk of accusing earlier music of following its path. But you can trace a clear straight line from this through the fashion for 'World Music' in the mid to late eighties and the sampling explosion of the nineties all the way through to ambient, Gorillaz-style mucking about and the retro-grooving of the likes of Daft Punk. It's fresh as a daisy too.
This could have been newly minted last week and people would still be saying how great it is. It's not particularly recognizable as a David Byrne project however, especially if you consider what he was doing in his day job. It's mainly credited to Eno but it's hard to say where the balance lies. There are Talking Heads-ish moments and the odd (always odd) Byrne vocal, but the overriding theme, if any, is the plundering of musical styles from the remoter corners of the world. It's divided into tracks and each has it's own character, but it also feels like a single piece of work. Its not linear, but its not disjointed either, pleasant and challenging all at once. Its weird, clever and eye-opening, and as someone who would claim that he's never quite got what all the fuss is about Eno, it definitely provides an explanation.
America Is Waiting
Mea Culpa
Regiment
Help Me Somebody
The Jezebel Spirit
Very Very Hungry
Moonlight In Glory
The Carrier
A Secret Life
Come With Us
SPEAKING IN TONGUESReleased: 1st June 1983
Talking Heads
Unusually for one of these posts, this comes just after having witnessed a performance of David Byrne's extraordinary 'American Utopia' show in Oxford (see picture). I can do hyperbole as well as anyone, but I think it's true to say that I've never seen anything so engaging, joyful, odd and perfectly executed and probably never will again. I deliberately started in this particular journey because I'd got a ticket and I felt I needed to do my homework, Crazy Dave runs the risk of being a difficult proposition. As it turned out I hadn't really broken out of Talking Heads prime years before the show came along in my calendar and I feared that Byrne, having left his TH days long behind him would pointedly ignore all those hits with his former band and promote his solo efforts and latest work.
Well, he certainly did cover a lot of the new album, which, of course I'll come to much later on, but with a wisdom and sheer empathy for his audience, he also chucked in beautifully crafted performances of a handful of the Heads most interesting and engaging songs. Among these was a core from this album, 'Slippery People', the sublime 'This Must be The Place (Naive Melody)' and a storming showstopper of 'Burning Down The House'. What is easily forgotten about Talking Heads is that they were simply a brilliant pop band. The songs are memorable and uplifting whilst avoiding any kind of cliche and having deeply challenging themes.
As a backdrop piece to the ongoing tour, the Guardian newspaper attempted to rank all of Byrne's albums (Heads, solo and collaborations), but it seems a particularly pointless exercise. From my experience so far, they are so different and yet worthwhile that you can't meaningfully compare them with each other (for the record, Remain In Light gained the top spot). However, it's clear that with Speaking In Tongues they seemed to hit an inventive and commercial sweetspot. Jonathan Demme's concert movie, 'Stop Making Sense' covers the tour around this album so many of the songs have a strong visual association through that film. I haven't seen it in a long time but I recall Dave suddenly popping up against a blood red backdrop for the creepily menacing 'Swamp' (a song that sounds like it has sleazed up the intro to Chicory Tip' s 'Son Of The Father').
If you had to try and characterize the album as a whole, you could say that Talking Heads dug deep into their soul and funk influences, but there's also a lot of (tuneful) industrial clanging and clattering going on too. It was suggested to me that I look at what else was around in 1983 to see how this compared. Well, a Google search of Top Albums 1983 throws up (among others) Synchronicity, Swordfishtrombones, Murmur and Let's Dance, so this was hardly a single point of light in the long dark night of early eighties popular music (should I mention Colour By Numbers by Culture Club and Lionel Richie's Can't Slow Down? Possibly not).
Burning Down The House
Making Flippy Floppy
Girlfriend Is Better
Slippery People
I Get Wild/Wild Gravity
Swamp
Moon Rocks
Pull Up The Roots
This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)
LITTLE CREATURESReleased: 10th June 1985
Talking Heads
It would be tempting to accuse Talking Heads of sacrificing their new wave/art pop credentials on the altar of shifting units with this, but I reckon that they probably had no problem with making catchy pop records and that the motivation was never to gain chart success. If you realize that you're basically trying to engage an audience whilst presenting something a little different then you need to have a few earworms in there to catch the attention. Talking Heads did have significant hits from this album, 'And She Was' and 'Road To Nowhere' being the most obvious. But their real strength was that they had the right product for the times - which was great music supported by great, innovative videos that could ride the crest of the early MTV wave.
From the previous piece on Speaking In Tongues you'll know that I have recent, first hand evidence of what an intensely visual artist David Byrne is. However in some ways the videos for the two big hits are quite literal. Roads, Dave running endlessly, a flying girl, although admittedly they are complemented by lots of inventive, animated material. These two songs bookend the entire album, but the rest of it is all exceptional too. From the beeping vocal on 'The Lady Don't Mind' to the funky madness of 'Television Man'. And should we read anything into 'Stay Up Late'. Is some poor baby is being subject to sleep deprivation or is it just what it seems - a bit of nonsense parodying how people go ga-ga over babies? I'd prefer to think the latter, it's too much fun to be spoiled by a dark edge.
'Creatures Of Love' also seems to be a contemplation on the production of offspring, set against a gentle country beat, and once again, it's probably as innocent as face-value suggests. The squishy-squashy feel of 'Swamp' from the previous album is suggested again on 'Walk It Down' but they somehow manage to throw in a bit of gospel and a killer chorus.
This is definitely the most even and consistent of their albums so far, but for this band, that might not necessarily be a recommendation, the sudden lurches into leftfield were often part of the joy of it all.
And She Was
Give Me Back My Name
Creatures Of Love
The Lady Don't Mind
Perfect World
Stay Up Late
Walk It Down
Television Man
Road To Nowhere
TRUE STORIESReleased: 15th September 1986
Talking Heads
All the way through from Remain In Light to here, these albums have been instantly familiar. They were a quite significant contributor to my student years, but True Stories might be the most familiar of them all. Byrne made a movie of the same name, which I've never seen but is available for rent for the price of a flat white coffee. However, I'll stick to the album for this one since it still represents a completely original set of songs and doesn't need the movie to put it into context I hope. It pretty much continues on from the tone of Little Creatures, if anything even more accessible.
I'm guessing that by now Talking Heads was, creatively, probably 90% Byrne. The film is associated with him, not the band, after all. If you were determined to identify the musical influences on this then I guess you'd look to the southern states of the USA (the film is set in Texas I think, so it figures). There's the trance-like voodoo of 'Papa Legba', and the swirling hurdy-gurdy of 'Radio Head' (one minor itch that Wikipedia has managed to scratch for me here, Radiohead the band did take their name from 'Radio Head' the song). But Byrne is never that far from African influences and the raucously joyous choir on 'Puzzlin' Evidence' seems to tap into this while 'Hey Now' has the slower feel of a spiritual.
However, I think my favourite on this album is the slow, reflective and really quite heartbreaking 'Dream Operator'. The sentiment of "When you were little, You dreamed you were big; You must have been something; A real tiny kid; You wish you were me; I wish I was you" is enough to find me swallowing something hard and jagged. Dave bends the truth a little to make his lyrics scan on 'People Like Us'. "In 1950 when I was born...", well he was actually born in 1952, but that extra "two" just won't cut it. It's a nice lazy steel-guitar piece too.
It finishes with 'City Of Dreams'. It's apparent that Byrne is interested in exploring America, it's history and evolution and this reflects on all of this in a regretful way. I loved listening to this again. Even if they were at each other's throats by this time, its a fantastic, upbeat album with enough quirkiness to keep anyone interested.
Love For Sale
Puzzlin' Evidence
Hey Now
Papa Legba
Wild Wild Life
Radio Head
Dream Operator
People Like Us
City Of Dreams
NAKEDReleased:15th March 1988
Talking Heads
Look, I’m sorry to keep banging on about it, but on David Byrne’s outstanding current American Utopia tour, the outstanding song performance would have to be ‘Blind’, in which a single spotlight was placed at the front-centre of the stage to project shadows of the performers onto the first, second and third walls of the performance space. There then followed an extraordinary shadow-play on the edges of the stage as people moved backwards and forwards, making them sometimes pretty-much life-sized and sometimes like giants. To bring vulgar commercialism into it, it was rather reminiscent of those Apple iPod ads where you saw someone grooving in silhouette. Anyway, what is also remarkable about the staging was that instead of distracting you from the song you suddenly realized what a great, affectionate subversion of James Brown’s brass-stabby soul efforts it actually is. Also, there was nary a bugle on stage, let alone the Miami Horns that it sounded like. Byrne was anxious to assure us that every note we heard was coming from the instruments on stage, so I can only assume that the guy with a keyboard strapped to his chest had some pretty whizzy technology built into his instrument.
On the album, which it opens, it is followed by the similar-in-some-ways ‘Mr Jones’. So The Heads are now building in traditional soul styles to complement the African rhythms, which are all fully present and correct in songs like 'Totally Nude' and '(Nothing But) Flowers'. Now for the latter I had a look at the official video, because I was sure it involved lots of animations of flowers covering buildings, but instead it's a performance video featuring Kirsty MacColl and Johnny Marr (meaning the unlikely triumvirate of British towns Dumbarton, Croydon and Manchester get a name check). So I either did see a video of that kind at some time, or the lyrics were so visually evocative that I made one up in my head. I've listened to it several times and I still can't decide if it is pro- or anti-ecology. David goes spikily falsetto on 'Facts Of Life' but for all its jerky-quirky-ness its a pretty bleak view of humanity.
The rest is interesting and varied enough, but there's something stopping it being as engaging as anything that has gone before, so perhaps they called it a day at about the right moment. I'll be honest, any theory about the cover image eludes me.
Blind
Mr Jones
Totally Nude
Ruby Dear
(Nothing But) Flowers
Democratic Circus
Facts Of Life
Mommy Daddy You And I
Big Daddy
Bill
Cool Water
REI MOMOReleased: 3rd October 1989
David Byrne
It's a warm sunny summer Sunday afternoon in the South East of London. I've found an almost full bottle of Pimm's in the back of the drinks cupboard. There's a shoulder of garlic and rosemary-smothered lamb roasting gently in the oven. England have just reached the semi-final of the World Cup in a rather disconcertingly competent manner and David Byrne's first solo effort of gentle, bright Latin American beats is drifting through the house. All is right and good in the RockOdysseys home.
It almost feels a crime to attempt any deconstruction of this, I daresay it's got some political clout if you listen carefully, and his ability to seamlessly integrate African music into his own little concoctions is undiminished. See 'Loco De Amor' for that. But this music in its original form is not meant to be analysed. It's for dancing and enjoying with the people around you. And Byrne is faithful to that original idea. His voice is very well suited to the music. That absent minded quaver just wanders along with it and is, dare I say it, almost sweet in it's execution. Kirsty MacColl lends an extra layer of beauty to the vocals on a number of tracks. The edgiest it becomes is on 'Good And Evil', where he starts to swoop and swerve a bit. He also abandons instrumentation almost completely on his parting shot 'I Know Sometimes A Man Is Wrong'. It could be accompanied by birdsong, or that might actually have been the birds in my back garden.
The cover art is, errm, disconcerting? At least to me. It's like one of those optical illusions where your mind keeps switching from one image to the other. When you can focus on Byrne's calm demeanor in the underlying photograph it's fine, but as soon as the whole image takes over it has a weirdly alien/horrific aspect.
Independence Day
Make Believe Mambo
The Call Of The Wild
Dirty Old Town
The Rose Tattoo
Loco De Amor
The Dream Police
Don't Want To Be Part Of Your World
Marching Through The Wilderness
Good And Evil
Lie To Me
Office Cowboy
Women vs Men
Carnival Eyes
I Know Sometimes A Man Is Wrong
UH-OHReleased: 3rd March 1992
David Byrne
At first I had this down as yet another piece of shiny pop fun, but then I started to latch on to some of the lyrics and thought I'd better check it out in a bit more detail. To be fair, Byrne's lyrics are sometimes so oblique that it really is quite hard to work out if he's trying to say something, and the tunes are so good that it's almost a shame to listen too hard. However, if there's a theme then I'd guess it's sexual politics and the opening 'Now I'm Your Mom' is as clear in intent as anything he's ever done. This was released in 1992, and yet it's only been in about the last 5-10 years that widespread acceptance of transgender people has occurred (I know, I know, there's a long way to go, but the tide has turned I think in recent years). Dave's take is pretty much totally in tune with the pervading view today, this is how it is kid, I was your Dad, now I'm your Mom but it's because we've progressed socially and scientifically and it's a good thing. It does come perilously close to sounding like Duran Duran at one point mind you.
It's followed by 'Girls On My Mind', which is a little harder to figure out. It could just be a reflection on the single tracked mindedness of most human males (once every 6 minutes isn't it supposed to be?), or it could be more sinister. Whatever, it's another great catchy tune.
Meanwhile there's probably some domestic violence going on in 'She's Mad'. The blame might well be shared but a hammer attack is disproportionate to a bite on the hand.
'Hanging Upside Down' is a gleeful take on shoplifting down at the local mall. It's got echoes of 'Stay Up Late' from Little Creatures, but, like the rest of this album it draws pretty heavily on Latin rhythms and lots and lots of brassy flourishes. Meanwhile 'A Walk In The Dark' lives up to it's name, with Byrne producing a schlocky horror vibe.
Overall though, it's just good, sophisticated pop. 'Twisting In The Wind', 'The Cowboy Mambo (Hey Look At Me)' and 'Tiny Town' are all full of joyful oddness, as is the cover art. I can't really find much explanation on it. I feel like the dog might be a well known character. It IS funny though.
Now I'm Your Mom
Girls On My Mind
Something Ain't Right
She's Mad
Hanging Upside Down
A Walk In The Dark
Twistin' In The Wind
The Cowboy Mambo (Hey Look At Me Now)
Monkey Man
A Million Miles Away
Tiny Town
Somebody
DAVID BYRNEReleased: 24th May 1994
David Byrne
I've been listening to and enjoying this for over a week and there was something nagging at me. It was part of the song 'Nothing At All' that was particularly tugging my mental coat. On that song he does a half spoken, slightly spooky, slightly distracted vocal and I realised that it was very similar in style to one of my faves, Loudon Wainwright III. Once that connection was made it was easy to see how much they have in common. Not afraid of a bit of off-the wall humor and darkness and full of quirky observations and even quirkier vocal adventures. The main difference is that Byrne couches it in pop and latin rhythms while Wainwright pretends to be an old folkie.
I reckon this album is as close to a return to Talking Heads as has happened so far on the journey, 'You & Eye' has echoes of 'Nothing But Flowers' from Naked. He seems less interested in exploring a single musical landscape like on Rei Momo. As a result it feels more like a conventional rock/pop album. The second track Angels is a hotch-potch of musical references. A jangling west coast guitar intro which suggested to me that he was collaborating with Johnny Marr again (he isn't) and a typical Byrne declaiming vocal. It overlays a complex funky bassline and at one point he almost yodels.
'Crash' is a different story. Very reminiscent of Lennon's 'Mind Games' in the way that Byrne delivers it and with a chaotic, you might well say "crashing" feel to it. 'Back In The Box' is a pingy, poppy highlight and he even throws in a fairly straightforward tender love song with 'My Love Is You'. However that does go a little dark at the end with "I'm primitive and selfish; I'm childlike and I'm helpless; Well I got that way because of; My love for you". 'Strange Rituals' on the other hand seems to be a stream of consciousness meditation.
Byrne's output since Talking Heads thus far has been great, but I reckon this has been my favourite to date. I've had no problem going back to it again and again.
A Long Time Ago
Angels
Crash
A Self Made Man
Back In The Box
Sad Song
Nothing At All
My Love Is You
Lillies Of The Valley
You & Eye
Strange Ritual
Buck Naked
FEELINGSReleased: 17th June 1997
David Byrne
There's a definite intent if you make your cover art a plastic mannequin of yourself and then call the album 'Feelings'. Byrne probably knew well enough that his fans didn't view him as an emotionless Kraftwerkian pop-bot, so there's obviously a joke in there. Having said that, this does feel more restrained and controlled. More conventional too with smooth latin rhythms on 'Miss America', although you can feel the jagged edges just under the breezy surface when you start paying attention to the lyrics.
Much of what is on this album is great, but is he playing it safe and well within his comfort zone. It possibly becomes a problem for these ultra-creatives, they have to keep upping the ante, otherwise they're stagnating and awaiting the next 'return to form'. By any other artist this would seem a clever, complex piece of work, which it is, but you always expect another leveling up from Byrne.
But that isn't faint praise, the tribal chant of Daddy Goes Down is a highlight and he follows it with some McCartneyish cello-work on Finite=Alright. He even goes a little bit thrashy on 'The Civil Wars' and 'They Are In Love' would pass for an Argentine Tango.
So this is better than good and worth 45 minutes or so of anyone's time, but perhaps he is marking time a little?
Fuzzy Freaky
Miss America
A Soft Seduction
Dance On Vaseline
The Gates Of Paradise
Amnesia
You Don't Know Me
Daddy Go Down
Finite=Alright
Wicked Little Doll
Burnt By The Sun
The Civil Wars
They Are In Love
LOOK INTO THE EYEBALLReleased: 8th May 2001
David Byrne
Ooh. it seems to be getting tough at the moment to engage with the David Byrne canon. That could be an indication of him being in the artistic doldrums at the turn of the century (it could also be more to do with me currently trying to keep my finger in a number of diverse pies), but I'm not entirely convinced that's true. This is as varied as everything that has gone before and it's brilliantly executed, but there's a but coming and I think it's just that it's quite conventional. Byrne seems to be doing gentle pastiches of a number of musical styles, so 'Smile' is clearly influenced by The Beatles 'Michelle', you feel like he's going to give us his take on Barry White when you hear the intro to 'Neighbourhood' and 'Walk On Water' might be his collaboration with Burt Bacharach.
Listen to it a lot though (and I have) and you begin to see some of the usual Byrne character emerging. The single release from this was 'Like Humans Do' which I barely remember (the early 2000's are probably the point where the whole concept of 'singles' started to go into decline), but it's almost like a simple child's lullaby. 'The Moment Of Conception' has a bouncy boingy beat that reminds you of 'Hey Ya' by Outkast.
So perhaps you can see that I was a little underwhelmed, but I can't put my finger on why. It's that state of uninspiring competence that the best artists are sometimes capable of, which, if you are mainlining their entire back catalogue, can easily look like a failure.
U.B. Jesus
The Revolution
The Great Intoxication
Like Humans Do
Broken Things
The Accident
Decsonocido Soy
Neighborhood
Smile
The Moment Of Conception
Walk On Water
Everyone's In Love With You
GROWN BACKWARDSReleased: 16th March 2004
David Byrne
My first thought was that this was Byrne exploring classical music, since the first few tracks are heavily dependent on strings, and by the third one he's attempting a Bizet aria, but as it goes on it spreads out a little more and feels fuller and more varied. It's also got quite a lot of Byrne's understated humour but while some of the songs feel light, there's quite dark undercurrent. 'The Man Who Loved Beer' seems particularly pessimistic and on 'Tiny Apocalypse' the pressure-loss helpline has gone down, so you're on your own as you suffocate in the modern world. 'She Only Sleeps' might be a dysfunctional 'Girl From Ipanema'.
That aria is Bizet's 'Au fond du temple saint' and comes from The Pearl Fishers. It's a duet with Rufus Wainwright (whom I patted myself on the back for identifying before looking it up). Not sure it quite works. Byrne and Wainwright have a similar, quavery tone to their voices, with Byrne's being a bit richer. It's just a tad too discordant and whiny. It's obviously not an attempt to create a pure rendition that you would hear from the classical tenor/baritone duet that its supposed to be (yes, I had to research quite a lot of that last sentence). He also finishes with 'Un Di Felice, Eterea' from Verdi's La Traviata. That's a little bit more successful, possibly due to the absence of Rufus.
Empire is quite political, Byrne discussing the modern dog-eat-dog world against a background of muted brass. Sounding almost like the last post for society. There's still some good pop on this record as well though. 'Dialog Box' is punchy, fun and catchy. I think whatever metaphor 'Pirates' is supposed to be flew over my head though.
And finally, let's go back to that night in Oxford in June. 'Lazy' is tacked onto the end of this album as a bonus track. He did it early in the performance and it set the tone for the rest of the evening, doing an odd, static little dance while he performed it. Here, it seems to be the extended remix, the collaboration with X-Press 2 was the one that charted and is pretty much what he was doing on stage earlier this year.
Glass, Concrete and Stone
The Man Who Loved Beer
Au fond du temple saint
Empire
Tiny Apocalypse
She Only Sleeps
Dialog Box
Pirates
Civilization
Astronaut
Glad
Un di felice, eterea
Lazy
EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS WILL HAPPEN TODAYReleased: 18th August 2008
David Byrne and Brian Eno
I've just come through listening to the 2018 Mercury Music Prize nominees, one of whom was The Arctic Monkeys with Tranquility Base Hotel And Casino, an album where concept was that it was based in a hotel and casino on the moon - there's a bit of a clue in the title. It seems quite likely that t'Monkeys took some inspiration from this, which seems to cast Dave as a lounge singer accompanied by Brian's futuristic soft, soothing backing tracks. There's something about it which almost suggests that their roles in this project were very clearly defined and ringfenced, the instrumentation is very Eno, the lyrics and singing is very much Byrne, but I'm not trying to suggest it doesn't hang together, it absolutely does.
It's very different from My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts too. This is a much more conventional album of sung songs, most of which are also pretty accessible. For example, the opening track, 'Home' has the faintest whiff of 'The Sound Of Silence' about it. There's a swell to it that made me think of the Simon and Garfunkel song. No need to be put off by the duo's arty-farty credentials either. Pretty much everything here is worth spending some time listening to. Byrne does some funny voices and Eno throws in some funny noises on 'Wanted For Life', and there's an intentional disjointedness and distortion on 'Poor Boy' - which also has a Stonesy 'Start Me Up' style guitar riff on it but that's as weird as it gets.
Home
My Big Nurse
I Feel My Stuff
Everything That Happens
Life Is Long
The River
Strange Overtones
Wanted For Life
One Fine Day
Poor Boy
The Lighthouse
HERE LIES LOVEReleased: 5th April 2010
David Byrne and Fatboy Slim
That album cover is likely to make you think that it's simply a kitsch joke. But that is, in fact, a photograph of footwear-obsessed former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos and this is indeed a biographical album of songs about her and the woman who raised her, Estrella Cumpas. That doesn't necessarily mean it isn't still a kitsch joke.
I was gunning for this one from the start. 22 tracks with just as many guest vocalists. Mostly female, since so much of it is from a first person perspective, which is certainly not a problem in itself, but first impression was that a glittering array of interesting individual talents had been rather short changed by Dave and Norm. It seemed that the character of their individual voices had been absorbed and constrained by the celebrity production team. Unlike when you're watching something on telly and you see an actor that you know you've seen before so you reach immediately for IMDB, here it was more like I knew I should recognize them but there's nothing really there to work on.
However, I have stuck with it and I'm beginning to realise that my initial reaction was probably wrong. Florence Welch is much more interesting on this than when she's squawking away at her day job, Cyndi Lauper is something of a revelation on 'Eleven Days', you need to be culturally deaf not to spot Kate Pierson on 'The Whole Man', and Natalie Merchant, whose voice forms part of the definition of 'plaintive' in all good dictionaries, performs 'Order 1081' as if it really is a 10,000 Maniacs song. I looked it up, it was the declaration of martial law that effectively installed Marcos as dictator in 1972.
It has been performed as a musical on the stage. It comes across a little in places as Disney's The Shoe Queen, but doubtless there's a steely grimness to some of the lyrics. Dave pops up a couple of times, doing the vocal on 'American Troglodyte' and dueting with Shara Worden on 'Seven Years'. Otherwise we just get Steve Earle as the token man - I'm guessing he's taking the role of Ferdie on 'A Perfect Hand'.
It's odd. Not what I was expecting. It shows Byrne (and Cook for that matter) aren't afraid to try something unexpected, but ultimately it feels a bit too controlled. However any album which brings together Tori Amos and Cyndi Lauper together in a duet deserves everyone's attention.
Here Lies Love (Florence Welch)
Every Drop Of Rain (Candie Payne and St Vincent)
You'll Be Taken Care Of (Tori Amos)
The Rose Of Tacloban (Martha Wainwright)
How Are You? (Nellie McKay)
A Perfect Hand (Steve Earle)
Eleven Days (Cyndi Lauper)
When She Passed By (Allison Moorer)
Walk Like A Woman (Charmaine Clamor)
Don't You Agree? (Roisin Murphy)
Pretty Face (Camille)
Ladies In Blue (Theresa Anderson)
Dancing Together (Sharon Jones)
Men Will Do Anything (Alice Russell)
The Whole Man (Kate Pierson)
Never So Big (Sia)
Please Don't (Santi White)
American Troglodyte (David Byrne)
Solano Avenue (Nicole Atkins)
Order 1081 (Natalie Merchant)
Seven Years (Shara Worden)
Why Don't You Love Me? (Tori Amos and Cyndi Lauper)
LOVE THIS GIANTReleased: 10th September 2012
David Byrne and St. Vincent
Maybe Byrne saw the previous Here Lies Love project as a set of auditions as to who to work with next. If so then Annie Clark got the nod and was invited along to Dave's house. I haven't explored St. Vincent much, but this is a nice. complementary coming together of talents that know how to take risks while still producing something you want to come back to. Opening single 'Who' is one of those rare songs that sounds like it has been around forever. Byrne's edge-of-comfortable-range voice is nicely soothed by Clark's warmth.
The predominant impression you get is that brass instruments are central to the whole album. Sometimes it's more like the soft melancholy of a colliery band ('I Am An Ape'), sometimes New Orleans jazz ('Ice Age') and sometimes just a load of barely connected parps ('The Forest Awakes'). There's also still plenty of Byrne's signature Latin and African beats too and I've enjoyed listening to it and it makes me want to familiarize myself with St. Vincent, but there's something about it that just falls short, like Byrne and Clark are doing it for something to pass the time.
The cover is disturbing. Wikipedia suggests that it is not a photoshop job, but prosthetics. Byrne looks like Robbie Rotten from Icelandic kiddies fitness show Lazytown.
Who
Weekend In The Dust
Dinner For Two
Ice Age
I Am An Ape
The Forest Awakes
I Should Watch TV
Lazarus
Optimist
Lightning
The One Who Broke Your Heart
Outside Of Space And Time
AMERICAN UTOPIAReleased: 9th March 2018
David Byrne?
So my summer of Heads and Byrne comes to an end, and it feels a little like I've come full circle. Writing about this album will give me one more chance to wax lyrical about what is highly likely to be the best live performance (I won't say concert, it was so much more) that I think I've ever seen. That was back in mid-June 2018 and I was around about 'Speaking In Tongues' on this journey. I'd listened to this album a couple of times before the show, but I hadn't quite keyed into it yet. Now that I'm writing this, I'm completely invested in the whole thing from start to finish.
I won't lie, Byrne has been challenging for me over these later albums, they all have great moments and he's never dull or predictable, but it has become hard to find something new to say about each subsequent album. So I'm going to bestow on American Utopia that most elusive of accolades, the Return To Form. I think this is easily his best since the Talking Heads days. There is a kind of vulnerability about his performances on this record that make you understand that he is, indeed, getting on a bit now. His voice strains, cracks and quavers even more than before, but it really amounts to character rather than weakness.
Having seen the show, one of the surprising things is that the song with which he opens on stage, 'Here', is the closing track on the album. He set the tone in the live environment by wandering around the stage with a plastic model brain, in the manner of a slightly distracted professor giving a lecture.
Dave seems to be projecting his thoughts onto a number of different things as he goes along. Chickens, dogs and bullets. On 'Every Day Is A Miracle' and 'Dog's Mind' he seems to be exploring religion and human condition through animal metaphors, while 'Bullet' takes us on a slo-mo journey as it rips it's way through a man's body. Repeated listens does starting making you wonder about the circumstances of the shot, since the path goes from stomach to heart to head. Maybe it's the JFK 'magic bullet'?
He's still playing around with different world music styles as well, for example there's a spare, oriental feel to 'This Is That', but stand outs for me are 'Every Day Is A Miracle', 'Everybody's Coming To My House' and 'Always Doing The Right Thing' - all of which are worthy of The Heads in their heyday.
Going through these 18 albums has shown me that Byrne has had a massive cultural impact that goes beyond what might be reasonably expected from an artist who can be described as 'art-pop'. Songs like 'Once In A Lifetime' and 'Road To Nowhere' are hard-wired into popular culture, and with this last album and show he's re-established himself in the top tier of popular music artists.
I Dance Like This
Gasoline And Dirty Sheets
Every Day Is A Miracle
Dog's Mind
This Is That
It's Not Dark Up Here
Bullet
Do The Right Thing
Everybody's Coming To My House
Here
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