Listening Post: Talking Heads - Remain in Light

Talking Heads - Remain in Light - 1980

David Byrne sounds like a shaman on "Born Under Punches", the opening super-percussive salvo. Only this time I get the real sense that he has, dare I say it, a sense of humor. "Some of you people just missed it!" is a line that just strikes me as funny.
So, I'm reading about Remain in Light and one thing that makes a LOT of sense while listening is that the band, specifically Weymouth and Frantz, were tired of being Byrne's back up band. Which is what they sound like on all the previous records, to me at least. They decided to start working together to create jams, keying off "I Zimbra". And that's very obvious on Remain in Light. "Crosseyed and Painless" has a driving beat and shuffle that makes it ripe for sampling. Talking Heads seem to be even further embracing the burgeoning african music scene, whether, as Wikipedia says, it's because they saw Hip Hop as the future or this was a natural progression from punk/new wave. Some were following Don Letts into Reggae and others were embracing more tribal rhythms. Remain in Light comes out the same year as Adam and the Ants's Kings of the Wild Frontier. I don't think this is an accident. But, Adam's global success is due to his understanding the importance of structure and the Heads refusal to embrace structure. In fact, they seem hell bent on decon-ing the structure whenever possible.
Gosh, just reading about the egos involved here...Eno wanted to be listed as a 5th member of the band. Byrne instructed the designer to credit it as "by David Byrne, Brian Eno & Talking Heads". The arrogance and control freaksim is astounding. Consider: this is a record that is dependent on the interplay between percussion and bass. Without that foundation there is no record. Period.
The lyrics, while they might offer something of interest, are just as often if not more just another instrument. Almost like Byrne and the singers are...speaking in tongues. And yet, there was an attempt to minimize Frantz and Weymouth...
No wonder they created Tom Tom Club.
But, how is the music? Inspired. Take, for instance, "The Great Curve", a masterwork of rhythms, stilleto guitar work (by Adrian Belew), the harmonies, all of them make for one of the best tracks in the band's catalog.
This is also the record with the first bona fide big hit for the band: "Once in a Lifetime". This is the one with the video of Byrne in the big suit. As strange as that video, the song is a slap in the face to consumerism and blind grasping for stature. The mid-life crisis in song. Feels like it. (I can also hear the roots of some of Eno's work with U2 in here) You might find yourself getting annoyed by the end, the polyrhythms never end and each song begins to blend into each other. "The Listening Wind" is a good example of this. But it reminds me instead of the deeper cuts on the Bowie/Eno records of the 70s or even a progression from Eno's Ambient music toward some hybrid animal of base human/programmed fairlight robot. Lose yourself in it. The album's coda "The Overload" could be seen as a sequel of sorts to Bowie's "Warszaw". It's dense, ominous, sad, plodding and funereal. It's unlike anything I've heard from the before or since but that doesn't make it any less powerful. Just...different.

1980 was a great year for music. Adam's Kings. Bruce's The River. Laurie Anderson's O Superman. The Clash's London Calling. And this.
If you only want to hear one Talking Heads record to get a sense of what the band was doing and why they rank so highly in the history of rock if not New Wave and punk, this is the record.

Grade: A+
ASide: Crosseyed and Painless, Once in a Lifetime
BlindSide: Born Under Punches, The Great Curve, The Overload