Speaking in Tongues

Talking Heads | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Warner Bros / Wea
• ASIN: B000002KZ6
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,128 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #41 in Music > Alternative Rock > New Wave & Post-Punk > Post-Punk
  • #58 in Music > Alternative Rock > Hardcore & Punk > General AAS

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

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

Product Description

Audio CD.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps their best September 26, 2002

By J. Sutherland

Format:Audio CD

Speaking in Tongues is an incredible album. Most bands slow down by their fifth album, but not the heads. Just when you think that they don't have any more brilliant creative riffs and bass lines they bring you this remarkable piece of art. The guitars are not as heavy on this as on previous albums. They incorporate many other synthesized elements into the mix but the results are very satisfying. All the other elements are still there: great songwriting, intellectually challenging lyrics, and rhythmic and melodic bass lines and guitar riffs. In terms of the songs themselves all of them are great. From track one to track nine every song is great and will have you singing along or dancing. "Making Flippy Floppy" is particularly energetic and danceable. It combines all the elements that characterize the heads and make them a truly great American band. Other standout tracks are "Burning Down the House," "Girlfriend is better," "Slippery People," hell just about every track. One great track that is really a standout is "Naive Melody (this must be the place)." This track is notable because it is perhaps the only real love song that David Byrne has ever written. It is about being thrilled to be with another person and is about faithfulness, at least this is what I gather. I also personally love this song because it has such a great, hypnotic guitar riff that is played throught the entire song. It is really a perfect way to end the album. It is so hard to rank the heads albums because just about everyone of them (especially the first five) is so good. Yet, still this has to be one of their best.

59 of 68 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Disjointed lyrics to fit your life to March 3, 2004

By Glen Engel Cox VINE™ VOICE

Format:Audio CD

My memories of Friday nights when I was in high school center around two things: playing in the band at football games and watching late night TV while eating a much-delayed dinner afterwards. In the early part of the 1980s, the show that I tuned in was Wolfman Jack's Midnight Special, where I was first exposed to the music video form, since we lived outside of town and didn't have MTV. I recall seeing Nick Lowe's "Cruel to Be Kind," Elvis Costello's "Accidents Will Happen," Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," Alice Cooper's "How You Gonna See Me Now," and Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House." These songs were staples of rock radio, even if the artists weren't, and the video portion did exactly what it was supposed to: increase my interest in the artist.

I didn't buy Speaking in Tongues until 1985, when most others had already moved on to other, newer, albums. But I was commuting back-and-forth between my home in Gatesville and community college in Killeen, a trip of roughly 40 minutes, and my soundtrack for that commute quickly became this album by Talking Heads which I had found in a used cassette store outside the local army base, Ft. Hood.

Why this album? A combination of circumstances surrounded it, making it appropos of the moment. I was living at home and attending Central Texas College because I had flunked out of the University of Texas at Austin, and the white-guy funk of David Byrne somehow matched the awkwardness of my situation, while being bouncy enough to keep my spirits up on that depressing commute, taking my mind off my failure and uncertain future. The fact that the lyrics of this album are an associative mass rather than a logical series allowed me to connect every song to my personal situation....

I can recall as if it were yesterday putting the steering wheel of a Ford Escort in my hands, bouncing in my seat as I sing-a-long with Byrne. From the gospelish chorus of "Swamp" to the infectious beat and call-and-response of "Slippery People," I would join in on each song, probably surprising a number of the pickups that passed me by with my spasmodic renditions of Bryne's stage moves.

And then there's that last song, a paeon to the comfort of home. Byrne sings, "Home is where I want to be, but I guess I'm already there" perfectly captured my confusion of appreciating that I had this generous spot to fall-back on while at the same time wanting to be somewhere else (a home of my own, not one made by my parents). The song always seemed to be playing as I drove up the hill to the house, too. It, and the other songs on this album, never fail to take me back to that time, even now that I've moved far from that home. But then, isn't that one of the functions of music? Read more ›

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hidden Grooves February 21, 2006

By tashcrash

Format:Audio CD

After purchasing all the remastered albums and listening to both sides of these dualdiscs inside and out, I have come to the earth-shattering conclusion that SPEAKING IN TONGUES is in fact their finest achievement. Prior to these reissues, I was a devotee of FEAR OF MUSIC and REMAIN IN LIGHT, but the extraordinary remastering here reveals previously indistinct, nuanced layers. Indeed, all previous iterations of this album were compromised (especially the truncated versions of some of the songs on the original vinyl release), while this is the definitive version. Songs are finally allowed to play out as extended jams, and it adds to the overall free-form feel. Even more than REMAIN, this is their most experimental sounding album, and the tracks that I once wrote off as filler ("Pull Up The Roots," "I Get Wild/Wild Gravity") now sound both resistently enigmatic and eminently danceable. In comparison, LITTLE CREATURES sounds all the more diminished, while TRUE STORIES is, well...pretty terrible (although I'm partial to about half of NAKED). And O-U-T (but no hard feelings...)

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Revered by seemingly everyone but me... February 21, 2006

By Michael Stack VINE™ VOICE

Format:Audio CD

An album that everyone but me seems to love, "Speaking in Tongues", the first Talking Heads album in three years when it came out, was also the first album since their debut not produced by Brian Eno, with the band taking over productions duties. The band proves remarkably diverse, clearly embracing many of the sounds and ideas the members explored between albums, but all in all, I find the album lacks something that the records with Eno had.

And in truth, it may have that its Eno I find missing-- it's been my assessment that in the twenty years or so Eno was involved in "art rock" records, the material he worked on was the pinnacle of the form-- his own albums in the early '70s, John Cale's mid-70s trio for Island records, David Bowie's Berlin period, the turn of the '70s Talking Heads albums, U2's mid '80s albums... all of them are pretty much universally superb and among the best (if not the best) by the artist Eno was engaged with.

But enough of my Eno love fest, as the case may be, this album is without him and the band explores programmed rhythms, dance beats and funk, as well as a number of other forms. The most noticable thing about the album is a number of the tracks are very dated-- they came from the '80s, it's pretty clear ("Slippery People", "Pull Up the Roots"). This isn't something that the Talking Heads is generally known for, their albums, particularly the early ones, have a unique timeless quality to them. On the other hand, the band is emmensely talented, and principle songwriter David Byrne endlessly inventive, and even in this sort of corner, they successfully manages to pull off at least one utterly superb piece in the form of single "Burning Down the House".... Composed from a throwaway jam, the piece ends up being everything great Talking Heads is-- timeless, somewhat funky and jittery. It works entirely too well. And certainly when the band spreads their wings-- be it the slow groove of "Girlfriend is Better" (featuring one of the most self assured vocal Byrne delivered with the band), the blues ramble "Swamp" (with Byrne an octave lower than usual) and the light and delicate closer "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)"-- the music is superb. The latter in particular is stunning, driven by delicately bouncing synthesizers with a fantastic gentle sound and superb vocal delivery from Byrne that introduces a sense of melancholy and gentle naivette that really makes it the standout of the record, even in the presence of "Burning Down the House".

This dualdisc reissue is superbly remastered-- both the stereo CD side and 5.1 DVD side sound superb (this album in particular benefits from the additional space 5.1 allows) and a few bonus tracks are included-- each side contains an alternate mix of "Burning Down the House", the CD side adds an unfinished demo and the DVD side videos for the singles.

But you know, in the end, a lot of people like this one a lot more than I do, and there may be a reason for that. It's certainly worth investigating, but I think it pales in comparison to the three albums with Eno. Newcomers to the band might do better starting with "Remain in Light". Read more ›