Remain In Light

Talking Heads

Sire, 1980

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_Heads

REVIEW BY: Sean McCarthy

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 05/12/2009

Remain In Light was the first album Talking Heads used to usher in the ‘80s and coincidentally, the last album the band would record with Brian Eno. The album was the result of the band slowly incorporating more and more Afropop song structures in their previous two albums. And while it yielded no hits in its initial release (“Once In A Lifetime” didn’t become a hit until a few years later), the album managed to crack the Billboard Top 20.

Remain In Light is one of the oddest hit albums in contemporary rock. The most noticeable sounds here don’t come from guitars, but from the keyboards of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, as well as Frantz’s sharp percussion. The blips and bleeps coming from songs like “Born Under Punches” and “Crosseyed And Painless” sound more like a Cold War-era warning broadcast than actual rock songs. my_heart_sings_the_harmony_web_ad_alt_250

The musical paranoia on this disc is only matched by David Byrne’s nervy vocals. In “Crosseyed And Painless,” Byrne sounds like someone whose nerves have been shot and opened raw for exposure. “Lost my shape…trying to act casual / Can’t stop – I might end up in the hospital,” Byrne speaks rather than sings in the opening. The song ends with Byrne muttering, “Facts are simple and facts are straight / Facts are lazy and facts are late / Facts all come with points of view” – it sounds like he could go on for hours on this tangent.

If the first few songs on Remain In Light are a bit alienating, “The Great Curve” offers a few hints of poppish escapism. Jon Hassell’s horn arrangements hit fast and perfectly as an almost gospel chorus of “A world of light…she’s gonna open our eyes up” swells. Coming right after “The Great Curve” is “Once In A Lifetime.” The iconic phrases in that song, released so early in the ‘80s, nailed the rise of the yuppies of that decade as well as their post-crash fall with lines like “And you may ask yourself / Where is that large automobile / And you may tell yourself / This is not my beautiful house! / And you may tell yourself / This is not my beautiful wife!”

Most music critics feel that Remain in Light is the Talking Heads’ best album. Personally, I’d give that award to Fear Of Music for its slightly warmer (read: more human) batch of songs. But Remain In Light is still a masterpiece that paved the way for Peter Gabriel’s and Paul Simon’s Afropop experimentation as well as newer bands like Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah and Vampire Weekend. It may not be the most accessible album from the band, but it certainly one worth the time and energy it takes to get to know.

Rating: A

User Rating: B+


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© 2009 Sean McCarthy and The Daily Vault. All rights reserved. Review or any portion may not be reproduced without written permission. Cover art is the intellectual property of Sire, and is used for informational purposes only.