Listening Post: Talking Heads - David Byrne - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today - 2008

My first exposure to this record was through the movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (Or Ridiculous things said by ridiculous people in a ridiculous movie). I found the song, "Home" pleasant enough but it reminds me of Beck's "Lost Cause". Both are lovely songs with needless sound effects to distract from the simplicity that they should bathe in. You want very much to like the song, but they are both so over thought that I, at least, find myself angry at them.
Also like Sea Change this is an album of songs. If one was expecting My Life in the Bush of (even more) Ghosts, this is not it. "MY Big Nurse and "One Fine Day" sound like the guitar written compositions they started out as. Something intended for campfire guitar. You expect to see people rocking back and forth under the stars and smiling at each other while canoodling under woven ponchos.
By the third track, "I Feel My Stuff", I find myself totally comfortable with the beat boxes and samples and glicks and chirps. The songs have all been so inviting that the determined weirdness of the piano breaks amidst the shuffling grooves don't bother me as much even as it morphs into a near cacophonic semi-rap. They wash over like soft waves at low tide and the rest is blithely hypnotic.
Marrying Gospel to Experimentalism might seem dicey, but on the title track it comes off as inspiring and saddening. It's a real treat. On previous albums Byrne or Eno or both would just keep on in that direction. Once they grasp on to some motif they tend to not let go. Instead, they turn up the tempo a hair and get us back to the campfire with the horn backed "Life is Long".
Sure, Byrne and Eno can't resist some tribalism as on "Poor Boy", but that's a small price to pay for such an accessible collection.

Everything that Happens....is notable for how Eno and Byrne (Like Radiohead before them) completely embraced the internet and new delivery systems, creating flickr pages and websites that engage the fan, completely eschewing advertising and traditional deliveries. They should be applauded and heralded as leaders. The war for the new music delivery template will be fought on two fronts: Startup bands embracing Facebook and Twitter (Steel Train. fun. Etc) and granddaddies of music who can afford to take these risks. Eno, Byrne, Radiohead, these guys are self-sustaining and can afford to be mavericks and vanguards.
I only wish that people like Bruce Springsteen, who appeal to a broader demographic, would do the same thing. The day of the "label" is over. But music is thriving and as good as it ever was. Not "same". Better.

Grade: A
ASide: Home, Strange Overtones
BlindSide: My Big Nurse, I Feel My Stuff
DownSide: The River

Listening Post: Talking Heads - Naked

Talking Heads - Naked - 1988

Take one part Tom Tom Club's poppines, latter day Heads songcrafting, a little Remain in Light esoteria/polyrhythm dance grooves and swirl it around with soul and you get the last Talking Heads record: Naked.
As opposed to the last two records this was recorded much like Remain in Light, with the band laying down musical beds with guest musicians and then Byrne writing and adding lyrics and melodies later.
The result is a hodgepodge of ideas which sometimes hit (Nothing But Flowers, Blind) and sometimes don't ("The Democratic Circus", what can only be described as a slow jam and near ballad. Two things no one wants from Talking Heads. Some of the time they sound like rewrites of other Heads tunes ("Totally Nude") or they are impenetrable and not very much fun ("Ruby Dear").
"Nothing But Flowers" might be the perfect way for this band to end. The song is about a post-end days world where Byrne is longing for the consumer trappings of the world past. It could be said to be part of a theme. An obvious sequel to "Life During Wartime" and perhaps a companion to "Road to Nowhere". As such, it's one of the best tracks the band has come up with.
The second half of the record shows the band's age. The plodding, dirge-like "The Facts of Life" finds the band struggling to force recharche sounds into previously trod musical territories. It's awful. And it's companioned by another lifeless entry, "Mommy Daddy You and I", a song that tries to be cute in places, but, come on, David Byrne can't pull off cute.
From there on, the album is just one tired motif after another until it finally comes to an end. It's as though the record is just exhausted. Not from overwork but from trying to overthink itself. You've heard it before. Get Remain in Light instead.
Get the single, "Nothing But Flowers" and pass on the rest of it.

Grade: C
ASide: Nothing But Flowers, Blind
BlindSide: Mr. Jones
DownSide: The Facts of Life, Mommy Daddy You and I

Listening Post: Talking Heads - Little Creatures

Talking Heads - Little Creatures - 1985

I was standing on the subway platform, reading the Village Voice, in 1985. There was a review of the new Talking Heads album and the writer, I don't recall who (but it might have been Christgau) wrote about how, for the first time in 6 albums, David Byrne seemed confident enough in his own voice to actually "sing".
The result was the smash hit album, Little Creatures. The one with the big singles on it and the terrific video. You remember it, don't you?

Let's liveblog.

1. And She Was - I hate songs that start with "and". It's a pet peeve. But I love this. This isn't ambient soundscapes. This is a song. With verses and a pre-chorus and a catchy chorus that you want to sing along to. There's a BRIDGE, Goddammit! Terrific.
2. Give Me Back My Name - A haunting piece that reminds me more of something that would show up on REM's Out of Time years later. I think the female vocals would be better with eitehr Excene Cervenka or Kate Pierson. But that's me.
3. Creatures of Love - What is a country song doing on a Talking Heads record? Okay, it's not great and the lyrics are weak, but the pre-chorus and the chorus is fun and its melodious as hell.
By now if you've just tuned in to Talking Heads's catalog you are gonna be in for a shocker if you decide to go back and pick up some of that middle stuff.
4. The Lady Don't Mind - okay, now this is the TH we've come to know. Or at least recognize. That's really misleading, however, because it's the percussion and voodoo guitar that plays over a simple melody. This is vintage TH by arrangement only and when the horns come in, you know it's not the Heads you've known. It's better.
5. Perfect World - Vintage slinky Talking Heads bassline, sweet backbeat, and Byrne's white soul croon. Excellent. Pretty. Perfect.
6. Stay Up Late - Easily one of my favorite Heads tracks of all time. Playful, mischievous, catchy, dark. I love it.
7. Walk it Down - A slowed down "Life During Wartime". Not bad. Not great. The chorus is leaps above the rest of the song.
8. Television Man - uninspired. Inoffensive.
9. Road To Nowhere - Nowhere, indeed. As in, "nowhere in the band's entire catalog of group and solo work was it even slightly suggested they were capable of this. A truly great song, upbeat in sound, kind of harrowing in subject matter. Then again, we are all really on Road to Nowhere, aren't we?

Speaking in Tongues and Little Creatures are two of the best pop/new wave/art rock records of the 80s.

Here's what Christgau said about the album: What the relatively straight and spare approach signifies is that their expansive '80s humanism doesn't necessarily require pluralistic backup or polyrhythmic underpinnings. I don't think I even have the energy to decipher that sentence let alone write it.

Grade: A
ASide: And She Was, Stay Up Late, Road to Nowhere
BlindSide: The Lady Don't Mind, Perfect World

Listening Post: Talking Heads - Sp eak in gi n To ngu es

Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues - 1983

It took a couple years (probably for egos to cool) for Talking Heads to give us some new music. The result was their most audience friendly to date.

One of the things I love about doing these reviews is that it has really allowed me to pull out old records, cassettes, CDs that I haven't given any attention to in ages. If I don't have it, I'm pretty sure I can hear it on Rhapsody or the like (makes me miss LaLa, however....)
I don't think I've listened to my copy of Speaking in Tongues in about 15 years. Maybe more. What I'm really impressed by, in context of these reviews, is how much power Frantz and Weymouth seem to be exhibiting over the proceedings. "Making Flippy Floppy" sounds like a Tom Tom Club song fronted by David Byrne. And that's a pretty big compliment since the weakest thing about TTC was the wispy vocals.
Of course there's the monster track, "Burning Down the House". We all know it. We all saw the video, but I forgot just how aggressive it is. It opens the album with a statement: This is not the ambient Talking Heads you might have gotten used to. These guys are loaded for art-rock bear.
The tribal rhythms continue with "Girlfriend is Better" but it's a sexy track, with a catchy as hell groove. Who knew you could sing along to a Talking Heads song again? It's been ages. The album continues the groovy funkfest with "Slippery People", a song that, if you've heard the Stop Making Sense version, will seem vastly inferior, but is still a dynamite song.
With every successive track it's obvious that the band has come together to do something they had long abandoned since becoming the darlings of the alternative music scene: write songs that people, normal people, can like. they haven't completely forsaken their weirdness. But now it enhances a song like "Slippery People" or "Moon Rocks" instead of being the only thing that matters.
Whereas songs like "Swamp" and "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" would never be found anywhere on the previous Eno-produced Talking Heads records. In a sense, I kind of feel like Eno was an enabler for Byrne's more esoteric leanings and the lesson of Tom Tom Club brought him back to earth. "Swamp" is more reminiscent of "Psycho Killer" than anything on Remain in Light while the latter is prettier and sweeter than anything in the band's previous catalog.
Speaking in Tongues was a bit hit for a band that no one really thought had it in them. I sure didn't. But I'm glad they made it cause it's fantastic.

Grade: A
ASide: Burning Down the House, Girlfriend is Better, Swamp, This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
BlindSide: Making Flippy Floppy, Slippery People
DownSide: Moon Rocks

Listening Post: Talking Heads - Tom Tom Club - Tom Tom Club

Tom Tom Club - Tom Tom Club - 1981

Ah, piffle.
It's pretty well known that Tina Weymouth was becoming more and more frustrated with the control over Talking Heads that David Byrne was wielding. As though he was the genius and they were lucky to be there.
So, on the side, while he was making My Life and Catherine Wheel, Tina and her husband, Chris Frantz enlisted some other players as well as her sisters and tossed off a bit of Rhythmic dance fluff.
And it's probably been more sustaining for them than anything they've ever done. I mean, come on, "Genius of Love"? How ubiquitous is THAT song???
What they were successful at, more than anything else, was creating a pop version of the tribal musings of Talking Heads. Like TH lite.
Let's be honest here: "Genius of Love" is one of the catchiest tracks of the 80s. Hands down. Just plain fun. And no one, NO ONE ever said that about Talking Heads before.
While there are some dull parts ("L'Elephant" goes on too long and "As Above, So Below" treads dangerously close to experimentation instead of dancey fun) the entire affair is too cute and short to linger too long.

I think of this album as the anti-Remain in Light. Or the anti-My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. It's sort of a triumph that it's paid such dividends for Frantz/Weymouth. While Byrne and Eno were taking themselves SOOOOO seriously, the "lesser" members of the band outdid them with something that everybody liked, everybody bought and everybody danced to. Byrne is what you SHOULD eat. Tom Tom Club is candy.
And sometimes you gotta have a piece of candy.

Grade: B
ASide: Genius of Love, Wordy Rappinghood
BlindSide: On On On On, Booming and Zooming
DownSide: Lorelei

Listening Post: Talking Heads - David Byrne - The Catherine Wheel

David Byrne - The Catherine Wheel - 1981

Ah, the early 80s. When we would all traipse to BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) to see Philip Glass's The Photographer. Or go to the movies to witness Koyaanisqatsi. You could see Laurie Anderson perform or bowl at the University Lanes and we all had a copy of Big Science.
For a couple years it seemed like art had won. And then it all came crashing down with, I think the advent of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous". And art was sent back to where it belonged: in the poverty strewn lines of the decrepit in the East Village.
But, as I said, there was a moment.
And during that time David Byrne was a leader. Talking Heads were bridging pop with art in a way that The Cars only dreamt of. See, TH wasn't gonna sell out and make POP SONGS. They were going to do it on THEIR terms. Well, on Byrne's terms. When he and Brian Eno came out with My Life in the Bush of Ghosts it seemed like the really knew what the world needed. The world of art, that is. Lord only knows what Julie Taymor would have done when presented with the likes of Byrne. But, Twyla Tharp (long before her involvement with Bully Joel's music) jumped on the David Byrne bandwagon and commissioned him to create music for her.
The result was The Catherine Wheel.
From the very beginning couple of tracks I find myself feeling the same way I did in 1984 when I first heard it: I wish I could have seen what this looked like on stage. This music seems so singularly appropriate for dance (where My Life in the Bush of Ghosts certainly did not).
"His Wife Refused" suggests what Byrne was trying to accomplish with lesser musicians that he had been saddled with. But, now with the likes of Brian Eno, Adrian Belew and, yes, Jerry Harrison, Byrne seems like a fuller artist, a dictator, yes, with a singular elliptical and nervous vision.
The music of The Catherine Wheel never suggests that it should be superior to the images that one can lay over it. It's made to be moved to. But it isn't just a series of beats without purpose. It's a soulful, post-punk, proto-funk, purposeful album.
About halfway through, as the ambient dissolved african tapestry starts to get a wee dull, Byrne comes back in full voice with r&b backing on "Poison". The timing couldn't be better. (And it couldn't sound closer to the pop sound his nemeses would be churning out in Tom Tom Club the same year, though nowhere near as accessible and twice as ominous)
Toward the end, after a more and more intensely building ambient climax, we are treated to the song "What a Day That Was", one of Byrne's best tracks and a high point of the Talking Heads live album, Stop Making Sense. And the equally satisfying, "Big Blue Plymouth".
Byrne took everything he's learned over the years with Talking Heads and Brian Eno and art school and made one helluva great soundtrack.

Grade: A
ASide: His Wife Refused, What a Day That Was
BlindSide: Ade, Two Soldiers, Combat, Big Blue Plymouth

Listening Post: Talking Heads - David Byrne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

David Byrne & Brian Eno - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts - 1981

(This review is based on the original vinyl pressing and not the expanded reissue.)

No overview of Eno or Talking Heads would be complete without taking a look at the work they did together in the midst of the Talking Heads career. In a sense, it represents everything Byrne has been trying to accomplish with the heads but was unable to, being dragged down by the albatross that is human beings with, you know, ideas of their own.
The heavy sampling of the record makes it one of the earliest albums to do so with such abandon, creating soundscapes that would become the bread and butter for the likes of Public Enemy and so many others in a couple years. It goes without saying that Byrne wouldn't have been able to complete his masterpiece without the help of Brian Eno who had been turning ambience and sound sculpting to an art form for the previous 5 years before this record was recorded.
What this means is the record is sort of bereft of actual songs. I just mention that because, if you were a Talking Heads fan and you went into this looking for "Life During Wartime" or even "I Zimbra" you're not going to get it. Tracks like "Mea Culpa" sound like they could have just as easily been produced by a young Jean Michel Jarre, if he wasn't so synthesizer obsessed. These are sound pieces with music. Not quite ambient in that they are supposed to flow into the background like "Music for Airports" but more like they are supposed to provide the backing for a high end fashion district shopping experience.
Not a spa, it's too energized for that, demands too much of your participation as a listener, and not a mall, either. But, maybe a high end shop INSIDE that mall. I'm thinking most of "Regiment" as a song I would like playing the next time I'm in Beverly Hills looking for a sports coat. (Which is never)
My Life is probably one of the most important albums of all time inasmuch as it predicated and predicted the explosion of sampling that would come and married that to african rhythms and other third world sounds. Black music could look at My Life as the template for just about everything that was about to come. For that it deserves high marks. I'm not sure when i would ever listen to this record again unless I was painting. Which is something I would like to do someday....
Ultimately, and I know that I am in the minority on this, I find My Life in the Bush of Ghosts supremely unsatisfying. I always have. I get the importance, but I'm not a fan.

Grade: B-
There's really no one better track than the others but...
Aside: The Jezebel Spirit
BlindSide: Mea Culpa, The Carrier
DownSide: A Secret Life

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

Listening Post: Talking Heads - Fear of Music

Talking Heads - Fear of Music - Fear of Music

"I Zimbra", a percussion heavy, african-rhythm layered song, opens Remain in Light, and, like the first album, suggests a much more accessible experience for the listener than we've been used to from TH. Oh, it's still more concerned with noise-scapes than being a "song", but it makes you want to tap your feet, at least.
Fear not, experimental music lover, "Mind" follows with production that seems to touch on all the tropes of the era. Spacey synth sounds, minimalist spaces between all the notes, vocal gymnastics instead of...um...singing...Byrne and Eno seem determined to turn Talking Heads into a David Bowie-esque art band. It isn't as though the band is afraid of music, per se. They seem to be allergic to songs. "Paper", the first cut that feels like the album is settling into itself, could have easily fallen off Devo's Are We Not Men? (Another Eno produced record). As it progresses, Fear of Music sounds less like an album of songs you would recommend to a friend than a soundtrack to an intense and paranoid urban warrior living in a post-government takeover world. Which may be the intent. Unless I'm reading into things. But "Cities" plays just like that and the very next song, "Life During Wartime" (my personal favorite Heads song ever) is pretty blatant about that subject matter. Which means that I could be right in my interpretation of intent or I let that song inform the rest of the record for me. Either way...The live version is better, the studio version just...peters out...
From there we're back in paranoia land with "Memories Can't Wait", a pulsating, pummeling onslaught of nervosa led by Mr. Gangly Big Suit himself. As it builds it gets more and more tense and results in being one of the only songs on the album not to fade out, but actually end.
Fear of Music pops up on just about every "Best of" list. Whether its the Best of the 70s or all time. I don't agree. I think critics are falling all over themselves to show that they are smarter than the average Kiss listener. They're not. They're buying into pretension as smarts. They are not the same at all.

Grade: C
ASide: Life During Wartime
BlindSide: Cities
DownSide: Mind

Listening Post: Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food

Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food - 1978

Remember when bands gave a shit what their album covers looked like? Sigh...
The reason for the Talking Heads-rospective is because of Eno. I immersed myself in so much of his work (and come to love his work and his ambient work even more) that it seemed only natural, having looked at the album he produced for Devo and covered U2 in the very first Listening Post, that I should jump in to TH. (Another connection: Jerry Harrison, Guitar and Keys for TH, produced Violent Femmes 3rd album.)
More Songs is an album that I actually never heard. My cousin had it, I think. Some roommate in college had it, too. In 198? NY who DIDN'T own it?
Me.
So, what did Eno do? He's got to deal with Warbling Dave up there and it's not like he can just SHOVE him back in the mix. Instead, what you notice on MSAB&F are the drums and bass. The rhythm section is what this album's about. Byrne's still the bug-eyed demento but the band is more cohesive. They don't just exist to serve him and his words. Eno brings them together and a unit of four.
Just as I start to find all the awkwardness a bit unrewarding, in comes "I'm Not in Love" and I'm reminded that the band is more than just a low-fi groove outfit. Now, it's just as straining as the others but it doesn't seem like it's weird for weirdness sake. There's a real sense of trying to accomplish something here.
But nothing on the record prepares you for "Take Me to the River", the old Al Green song. Listening now, it's obviously a companion piece to "Psycho Killer". Maybe it's sung by a victim of the psycho as he's being dragged to his final resting place in some creek somewhere in the pacific northwest.
Works for me.
The album's closer, "The Big Country" is actually a nice little track. A bit of country confection that, to be honest, I would never have expected from them. Well, it's country, run through the hiccuping taffy machine that is David Byrne.

Sidenote: As I read bios for the band while listening to the music I found a quote where David Byrne refers to himself as "Borderline Asperger's, I guess." So, I'm not that far off.

Grade: B+
ASide: Take Me To The River,
BlindSide: Thank You for Sending Me an Angel, The Good Thing

Listening Post: Talking Heads - Talking Heads: 77

Talking Heads - Talking Heads: 77 - 1977

Not THE Talking Heads. Talking Heads. Important distinction. Like Smashing Pumpkins. Not THE Smashing Pumpkins. "Smashing" could be how they look, right?
Talking Heads is more of a commentary on the takeover of television. These are 2nd generation tv people. Still Boomers, but too young to have been the first teenagers. Able to look at the world with cynicism and the soul of artists.
One of the first CBGB breakthrough bands, TH's first album opens with the bouncy "Uh oh, Love Comes to Town" which belies the tact they will take in the future. A peppy little tune for such a smartly cynical band. If Devo were plastic people embracing technology, Talking Heads were their white soul cousins. Not too surprising that Eno would have something to do with both bands at some point.
If you were drawn in by the pop confection opener you were going to be left scratching your head the rest of the way. The album is chock full of nervous energy, herky rhythms and vocal warbles as Byrne just isn't comfortable singing yet.
The Side One closer, "No Confession" is just trying wayyy too hard to be ambitious and different. Side Two attempts to bring us back to pop but "The Book I Read" feels like a deep track and not a single.
By the time you get to the brilliant "Psycho Killer" you're ready for it. Everything has led you there.
Talking Heads, based in NYC, would sort of become the soundtrack for that city in the 80s. One look at movies of the era like Something Wild and you can't miss it. The steel drum sound, the faux-lypso, the appropriated black music by well-intentioned white people, it's a melting pot. In the late 70s punk was embracing reggae, mainly cause punkers were hanging out in clubs where Don Letts was DJing and they fell in love with what he played. Had they not, would the Clash have turned to Reggae?
Would Talking Heads just be an anomaly? I don't know.
The album opens as it closes, bookended by Heads pop. "Pulled Up" is one of the better tracks on the album, forward thinking, energized, I love it.

I heard :77 for the first time in 1982 just before heading off to college. It sounded dated to me then. It still does now.
To be honest, 77 gets a higher rating as a debut than it would if it was just another album.
I liken it to XTC if they were autistic.

Grade: B+
ASide: Uh Oh Love Comes to Town, Psycho Killer
BlindSide: Who Is It?, Pulled Up