Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
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Artist: Talking HeadsBrand: TALKING HEADS
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1990-10-25
Music Label: Warner Bros / Wea
Soundtracks:
- Burning Down the House
- Making Flippy Floppy
- Girlfriend Is Better
- Slippery People
- I Get Wild/Wild Gravity
- Swamp
- Moon Rocks
- Pull up the Roots
- This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
Free Music Notes for Speaking in Tongues
Free Music Review: Green Andy Reviews: Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
Hit: 5 Stars
This is the first album I ever purchased. It would have been a Weird Al Yankovic album (DARE TO BE STUPID, specifically) if not for seeing the movie Revenge of the Nerds as a child, and hearing "Burning Down the House" played in the frat party scene near the beginning. I just thought it was a cool robotic-sounding song, and had no idea that the rest of the album would blow my 10-year-old mind the way it did.
It's often been my experience that the first thing you hear from a band strongly affects how you judge the rest of their work, so if you dive into the middle of their discography the earlier albums simply sound like precursors and the later albums sound like deviations. That's exactly how Speaking in Tongues has affected Talking Heads for me. Of course in this instance, it helps that this is truly the best album the group ever put out. Expanding their sound massively by adding backup singers and extra orchestration, the group stretched out their original nervous, jittery sound into a spacious, rhythmic, eccentric groove, full of unexpected percussive and lyrical asides, eerie melodies and inexplicable drama that catches you up even if you don't understand it. David Byrne's lyrics are in high obtuse mode here, and while I imagine he's making sense to himself (despite his chant of "stop making sense!" at the end of the song "Girlfriend Is Better"), he seems to be basically painting with words from our perspective. But it's a lovely painting.
It's difficult for me to be objective about this record because I've been listening to it for 22 years, but there are so many high points on it: obviously the bombastic "Burning Down the House", but also the careening "Making Flippy Floppy" and "Pull Up the Roots" (the latter riding a piano line with almost unbearable tension), "Girlfriend Is Better", which sounds like Parliament on downers, and the spare, abstract pieces "Slippery People" (with a pronounced gospel influence) and "I Get Wild/Wild Gravity". There's more great songs, but I don't want to spoil all the surprises for you. I've bought lots of Talking Heads records since this point, but their early work ('77, FEAR OF MUSIC) lacks the nuance of this album, and on subsequent records (TRUE STORIES, NAKED) the insistent groove seems to fade away, like they couldn't concentrate long enough to maintain it. There's no really bad Talking Heads album, but this is unquestionably their best.
Speaking in Tongues Poster
No Description AvailableNo Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: TALKING HEADS
Title: SPEAKING IN TONGUES
Street Release Date: 07/07/1987
Genre: ROCK/POP
Observe as David Byrne finally learns to dance. Non-Western sounds and funky rhythms had infected Talking Heads music prior to this 1983 pop breakthrough, but Speaking in Tongues is where the beat truly gels. The band's quirky, nerdy persona somehow blends easily with music borrowed from the African Diaspora on "Stop Making Sense" and "Burning Down the House." The album also marks one of the last true band collaborations, before Byrne reduced his partners to mere sidemen. If their edgier early albums now sound more challenging and unique in hindsight, Speaking in Tongues at least documents the New York quartet's singular blend of World Beat, art school rock, and the always irresistible dancefloor. --Steve Appleford
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