Customer Reviews

Speaking in Tongues

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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?

From the first track, the classic "Burning Down The House" to the final, euphoric "This Must be the Place," this album puts a big old smile on your face! It makes you feel like dancing, running, jumping and loving. Even playing this album for little kids, they instinctively get up and start bouncing around; it's just that infectious. Like others, I have always been insanely moved by the aforementioned "This Must be the Place," which I think just might be the best song this wonderful band ever wrote, which is certainly saying something. Still, at this great price, you'd be foolish not to add this joy to your life!

This is the Talking Heads' finest album because this is the one that strikes a perfect balance between the pop sensibilities displayed on "Talking Heads `77" and "More Songs About Buildings And Food", and the adventurous experimentalism of "Fear Of Music" and, especially, "Remain In Light". On "Speaking In Tongues" the best elements of all that came before gel into a stunning, delicious, exquisite work that manages to be simultaneously complex, deep, infectious, incredibly catchy, and profoundly fun. This was the blueprint that all subsequent Talking Heads albums followed, but never again with the same degree of success.

Somewhere between the eclectic dance tracks born of New York's CBGB and the ultra-popular pop success of "Little Creatures" came this rock and roll gem.

Harder than "Fear of Music" and less campy then subsequent efforts, this is probably the last true Talking Heads album...as the rest really seem to be David Byrne albums.

The legendary "Burning Down The House" leads this collection of hot Head's singles, many of which finally found airplay on mainstream radio.

This is a great, loud and historically significant classic, and a must own for any Heads fan.

As time passes the accomplishments of Talking Heads are all the more remarkable. Their evolution as a band and their fearless willingness to constantly try new directions in music keep them firmly at the forefront among the most innovative artists in modern music history. Never dated, they continue to stand the test of time. "Speaking in Tongues" finds them at their creative apex, and perhaps at their most joyful. The expanded lineup first experimented with on "Remain in Light", is fully integrated into the sound, and the sound is a cool groove of funky polyrhythm mixed with jumpy urban confidence. "Burning Down The House" opens "Speaking in Tongues", and immediately announces the album's intent: it's going to burn down your house and you're going to enjoy it. The song was Talking Heads first big hit, and to the surprise and delight of David Byrne was on the playlists of both black and white radio stations. With good reason; it's a full-throated funk stomp, and is as authentic as a P-Funk meltdown. The unique menacing/ebullient attitude of "Speaking in Tongues" is continued on "Making Flippy Floppy" and "Girlfriend is Better", which starts out with the memorable (and post-80's prophetic) line "Who took the money/Who took the money away." "Slippery People" and "I Get Wild/Wild Gravity" maintain the uptempo paranoia. "Swamp" (incongruously part of the "Risky Business" soundtrack), gets gleefully dirty. Its lyrics and their delivery a non-stop montage of cheerful dread, as Byrne intones such ominous pleasantries as "Rattle of bones/Dreams that stick out/A medical chart on the wall/Soft violins/Hands touch your throat/Everone wants to explode." sounding like a redneck sherrif/nuclear physicist. Fun. "Moon Rocks" and "Pull Up The Roots", jump back on the apocalyptic dance party train, which, by and large is what "Speaking in Tongues" most closely resembles. Lyrically and musically creating an aural journey of post-modern dread combined with an underlying and inexplicable optimism. It is, in retrospect, a perfect and prophetic distillation of the 1980's, in sound and texture, as well as lyrically. The jouney's ultimate destination is home. "This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)" is a wondrous hymn to the primal joy of home and unconditional love. It's "naive melody" the result of the band playing instruments they were inexperienced with. It contains the sweetest and most un-self consciously yearning music and lyrics Talking Heads ever created: "You've got a face with a view/I'm just an animal looking for a home." "And you'll love me till my heart stops/Love me till I'm dead." "Sing into my mouth." It's achingly poignant yet strangely reassuring, and a transcendant moment for the band. "Speaking in Tongues" starts by burning down your house and ends with the gift of the true home in your heart. It's profound and funny at the same time and all in all, an enduring testimony to a band like other, at the peak of their powers.

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.

Variously described as punk rock, art rock, alternative rock, and new wave, The Talking Heads originally formed in 1974 and became one of many cutting-edge bands to emerge from New York's legendary CBGB'S, the proving ground of such diverse acts as Patti Smith, Blondie, Television, and Mink DeVille. By 1977 the band had sufficient momentum to get a record deal and within a few years the band began to register on both sides of the Atlantic--but although they were well known to fans of alternative music, it wasn't really until 1983 that Talking Heads truly crashed the music charts. The release that did it was SPEAKING IN TONGUES.

According David Byrne, the lyrics were originally ad libbed nonsense phrases--but these ad libs gradually developed a life of their own, and while each phrase in each song doesn't necessarily make any sort of narrative sense they do make a sort of emotional and kinetic sense in tandem with the band's sonic extremes, which range from borderline out of control to meticulously detail work--and often within the same song.

It's an odd thing to say about an "art band," but most music by The Talking Heads is very danceable--and the selections from TONGUES is no exception. Everything has a strong beat, a solid drive, be it the opening and prickly-sounding "Burning Down The House" or the closing and surprisingly delicate "This Must Be The Place." But what really sets The Talking Heads apart from every other band of the era is the way it fiddles with musical ideas. You find a bit of everything here: African rythmns, pop riffs, growly rock vocals, sweet glosses.

"Burning Down The House" is the cut that everyone knows (it was the band's only top ten American hit), but this is a case where it's all good and personal favorites are simply that: personal favorites. Returning to the recording after some years, I did not necessarily link a title with a particular song... until I heard the first few notes and was instantly as into the piece as I was in 1983. It's hard to select a favorite, but if I had to do so I'd give to either "Swamp" or "This Must Be The Place."

Some Talking Heads fans dismiss SPEAKING IN TONGUES as a case of the band beginning to sell out to industry demands for a more pop-inflected, more radio-friendly sound. It is true that the album is more pop-inflected than most of the band's work, but the inflection is comparative; it's not anywhere within the mainstream of popular music. It was, however, the beginning of the end of the band, for it focused public attention on David Byrne who thereafter began an effort to artistically dominate bandmates Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth--which effectively split the band after a few more releases. But whatever the case, they were on the cutting edge in their day and that edge hasn't dulled in over twenty years. Still unlike any other band, still same as it ever was. Recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

I second the pull up the roots comment! Might be my favorite song on the whole album. This entire album is awesome though, and its really good on a long drive in the summertime.

I picked this album up used at an old record store. Popped it in my cd player and WOW! This is by far the greatest Talking Heads Album Making Flippy Floppy is a really well composed song. What is neat about this album is it has a sort of reggae funk to it with all kinds of random lyrics. YOU WILL ENJOY THIS IF YOU ARE A TALKING HEADS FAN OR ARE NEW TO THEM!