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
