More Songs About Buildings and Food

Performer: Talking Heads
Artist: Brian Eno
Engineer: Rhett Davies
Producer: Brian Eno; Talking Heads
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Also available with TALKING HEADS '77 on 1 cassette. Talking Heads: David Byrne (vocals, guitar, percussion); Jerry Harrison (guitar, keyboards, background vocals); Tina Weymouth (bass, background vocals); Chris Frantz (drums, percussion). Additional personnel: Brian Eno (various instruments, background vocals). Recorded at Compass Point Studio, New Providence, The Bahamas in March and April 1978. Talking Heads: Jerry Harrison (vocals, guitar, keyboards, synthesizer); David Byrne (vocals, guitar, keyboards, bass instrument, percussion); Tina Weymouth (guitar, keyboards, synthesizer, bass instrument, percussion, background vocals); Chris Frantz (keyboards, drums, percussion). The Heads' second album found them building on the twitchy "new wave" sound they established with their debut while using that approach as a springboard for new lyrical and musical innovations. The band's sonic pallette is a bit wider here; the interplay between the guitars of David Byrne and Jerry Harrison is more fully developed here, are Harrison's keyboard contributions (he was, after all, strictly a keys man in the Modern Lovers, one of the Heads' primary influences). The band displays diversity with their first recorded cover tune, Al Green's "Take Me To The River," which they redefine with an ominous, supple sensuality. While Byrne still sounds like his nerves are being stretched to the breaking point, the band is a little looser here, as on the jumpy, Velvet Underground-ish "Thank You For Sending Me an Angel." Byrne's hyper-intellectualism is in full flower on BUILDINGS, from the gender politics lesson "The Girls Want to Be With the Girls" to the New York bohemian slant of "Artists Only," whose key phrase is "you can't see it till it's finished!"

Uncut (p.82) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "It stitches together reggae, proto-math-rock noodling, Devo angularity and funk into a seamless, symmetrical and bizarrely sexy package..."

Proving you could rock despite having attended the Rhode Island School of Design, Talking Heads' innovative brand of downtown art-pop featured David Byrne's manic yelp, pointed lyrics about mundane subjects, and R&B-meets-Velvet Underground grooves, all without ever tipping over into pretension. The group began making twitchy pop in the punk era, but by the early-1980s the Heads had graduated to a dense, funky style incorporating a phalanx of additional musicians including Adrian Belew and P-Funk keyboardist Bernie Worrell. They made a slight return to their pop/rock roots before imploding at the end of the '80s, moving on to solo projects and production work.

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