Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
|
Artist: Talking Heads Title: Speaking in Tongues Label: Warner Bros / Wea UPC: 075992388320 Price: $7.98 |
Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues Track Listing
1 - Burning Down the House
2 - Making Flippy Floppy
3 - Girlfriend Is Better
4 - Slippery People
5 - I Get Wild/Wild Gravity
6 - Swamp
7 - Moon Rocks
8 - Pull up the Roots
9 - This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
About Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
Observe as David Byrne finally learns to dance. Non-Western sounds and funky rhythms had infected Talking Heads music prior to this 1983 pop breakthrough, but Speaking in Tongues is where the beat truly gels. The band's quirky, nerdy persona somehow blends easily with music borrowed from the African Diaspora on "Stop Making Sense" and "Burning Down the House." The album also marks one of the last true band collaborations, before Byrne reduced his partners to mere sidemen. If their edgier early albums now sound more challenging and unique in hindsight, Speaking in Tongues at least documents the New York quartet's singular blend of World Beat, art school rock, and the always irresistible dancefloor. --Steve Appleford
Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues Reviews
Average Rating: 4.5
Rating: 3
Actually let me state right away that Speaking in Tongues is probably a 3.5 rating because most of it *is* enjoyable, it's just that you have to be in a really good, energetic mood in order to fully appreciate an album like this.
Most of the songs are completely stuck in dancing rhythms and beats (a style that was obviously quite popular throughout the 80's).
The problem is that I mostly like the Talking Heads for their highly unusual, quirky, and complex songwriting. Speaking in Tongues mostly ignores all that.
Before this album was released, the Talking Heads were definitely one of the most innovative pop/rock bands of the late 70's. This album is just... too normal by their standards, not to mention severely dated and stuck in the early 80's (right down to the yucky album cover). You'll immediately be able to tell what year this music was made, no doubt about it.
Most of the songs on Speaking in Tongues honestly blend together in my head the same way several other albums from the same period in time blend together. It's enjoyable music, but only mildly so. Dancing is fun, but not every time I wanna hear a Talking Heads album.
As a result of the album being dominated with dance material, I can't recommend this album to everyone sadly- only people who have a strong desire to build a collection of 80's dance material will get anything out of this.
Rating: 5
The only song on this CD I could honestly say I don't like is I Get Wild. Every other song is really very enjoyable... some greatly so; my favorites are Making Flippy Floppy and Pulling Up The Roots, but I actually found out about the CD through This Must Be The Place. This album truly is a work of art, and a good first buy for those new to the band. (I should know; it was my first!)
Rating: 5
This is the first album I ever purchased. It would have been a Weird Al Yankovic album (DARE TO BE STUPID, specifically) if not for seeing the movie Revenge of the Nerds as a child, and hearing "Burning Down the House" played in the frat party scene near the beginning. I just thought it was a cool robotic-sounding song, and had no idea that the rest of the album would blow my 10-year-old mind the way it did.
It's often been my experience that the first thing you hear from a band strongly affects how you judge the rest of their work, so if you dive into the middle of their discography the earlier albums simply sound like precursors and the later albums sound like deviations. That's exactly how Speaking in Tongues has affected Talking Heads for me. Of course in this instance, it helps that this is truly the best album the group ever put out. Expanding their sound massively by adding backup singers and extra orchestration, the group stretched out their original nervous, jittery sound into a spacious, rhythmic, eccentric groove, full of unexpected percussive and lyrical asides, eerie melodies and inexplicable drama that catches you up even if you don't understand it. David Byrne's lyrics are in high obtuse mode here, and while I imagine he's making sense to himself (despite his chant of "stop making sense!" at the end of the song "Girlfriend Is Better"), he seems to be basically painting with words from our perspective. But it's a lovely painting.
It's difficult for me to be objective about this record because I've been listening to it for 22 years, but there are so many high points on it: obviously the bombastic "Burning Down the House", but also the careening "Making Flippy Floppy" and "Pull Up the Roots" (the latter riding a piano line with almost unbearable tension), "Girlfriend Is Better", which sounds like Parliament on downers, and the spare, abstract pieces "Slippery People" (with a pronounced gospel influence) and "I Get Wild/Wild Gravity". There's more great songs, but I don't want to spoil all the surprises for you. I've bought lots of Talking Heads records since this point, but their early work ('77, FEAR OF MUSIC) lacks the nuance of this album, and on subsequent records (TRUE STORIES, NAKED) the insistent groove seems to fade away, like they couldn't concentrate long enough to maintain it. There's no really bad Talking Heads album, but this is unquestionably their best.
Rating: 1
As of 04/30, I stil have not yet received the CD form the Talking Heads. Not a very happy customer. How will I be compensated for the inconvenience?
Alan
Rating: 5
Variously described as punk rock, art rock, alternative rock, and new wave, The Talking Heads originally formed in 1974 and became one of many cutting-edge bands to emerge from New York's legendary CBGB'S, the proving ground of such diverse acts as Patti Smith, Blondie, Television, and Mink DeVille. By 1977 the band had sufficient momentum to get a record deal and within a few years the band began to register on both sides of the Atlantic--but although they were well known to fans of alternative music, it wasn't really until 1983 that Talking Heads truly crashed the music charts. The release that did it was SPEAKING IN TONGUES.
According David Byrne, the lyrics were originally ad libbed nonsense phrases--but these ad libs gradually developed a life of their own, and while each phrase in each song doesn't necessarily make any sort of narrative sense they do make a sort of emotional and kinetic sense in tandem with the band's sonic extremes, which range from borderline out of control to meticulously detail work--and often within the same song.
It's an odd thing to say about an "art band," but most music by The Talking Heads is very danceable--and the selections from TONGUES is no exception. Everything has a strong beat, a solid drive, be it the opening and prickly-sounding "Burning Down The House" or the closing and surprisingly delicate "This Must Be The Place." But what really sets The Talking Heads apart from every other band of the era is the way it fiddles with musical ideas. You find a bit of everything here: African rythmns, pop riffs, growly rock vocals, sweet glosses.
"Burning Down The House" is the cut that everyone knows (it was the band's only top ten American hit), but this is a case where it's all good and personal favorites are simply that: personal favorites. Returning to the recording after some years, I did not necessarily link a title with a particular song... until I heard the first few notes and was instantly as into the piece as I was in 1983. It's hard to select a favorite, but if I had to do so I'd give to either "Swamp" or "This Must Be The Place."
Some Talking Heads fans dismiss SPEAKING IN TONGUES as a case of the band beginning to sell out to industry demands for a more pop-inflected, more radio-friendly sound. It is true that the album is more pop-inflected than most of the band's work, but the inflection is comparative; it's not anywhere within the mainstream of popular music. It was, however, the beginning of the end of the band, for it focused public attention on David Byrne who thereafter began an effort to artistically dominate bandmates Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth--which effectively split the band after a few more releases. But whatever the case, they were on the cutting edge in their day and that edge hasn't dulled in over twenty years. Still unlike any other band, still same as it ever was. Recommended.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
"It was a good show. It was the first one of his tour. I sat on the front row and Jackson was as great as always. I was surprised when the bass player was not playing on one of the songs. I really miss Jackson playing with David Lindley. Nothing like the o..."