Day 57: Talking Heads – Remain in Light
Album cover courtesy of Sire Records
It took me ages to pick an album today. I was listening to a few, they were all top-tier but none of them felt like something I’d want to write about. After trying a few, I settled on a band I used to listen to a lot but haven’t listened to much lately: Talking Heads.
Formed in the mid-‘70s, Talking Heads is a pioneering new wave-y post punk band that was formed by three friends who had met while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design. Singer and guitarist David Byrne, bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz moved to New York and changed their name from the Artistics into Talking Heads. Jerry Harrison from The Modern Lovers joined them as a keyboardist-guitarist.
Released in 1980, Remain in Light is the fourth studio album of Talking Heads. It was produced by Brian Eno and created in a way that David Byrne called human sampling: they’d get together for instrumental jam sessions and then loop the parts that sounded the best to make them into songs. The album was heavily influenced by the funk and soul riffs of afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti and the local reggae bands in Nassau where the album was recorded.
The resulting album is nothing short of incredible. There’s a fullness to the sound that elevates the album, probably resulting from the jazz influences that are present on the record. There’s so much going on in this album that I could probably listen to it 20 times and notice something different every time.
If there’s one band that I’d describe as doing their own thing, it’s Talking Heads. In an interview, David Byrne talked about how important it was to him not to copy what others had done in the past and to innovate and do something that’s completely his own:
Other contemporary acts, people around us, some of them were adopting poses or clothes or guitar styles or whatever that seemed to be from a previous era, from a previous generation. And I thought to myself, well, those were invented or created by other people and they belong to them and they express something about their generation. But how do I do something that belongs to us, that speaks to our generation, that speaks to our concerns?
This is the sort of spirit you can hear on the album: no one is doing it like Talking Heads. Seriously, watch them perform – there still isn’t an act that gets to their level. Remain in Light still sounds fresh and cutting-edge some 45 years after its release. The album is so joyful and inspired that it makes me wish I played any instrument, no matter how badly. I want to take my clothes off and play the bongos to it Matthew McConaughey-style, except hopefully without getting arrested.
I love David Byrne, he’s a true original. I once yammered about this band so much at a party that a man gave me a Talking Heads sweatshirt. Safe to say I love them very much. Remain in Light is a very strong 9.5/10.