Customer Reviews

Talking Heads: Little Creatures

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After their debut album, the Talking Heads began building music of excess-- extra musicians, layered instrumental arrangement, polyrhythms, and so on, driven on by David Byrne's sort of all-accepting view of music and in part fueled by Brian Eno's production wizardry. After an album that was more electronic then organic ("Speaking in Tongues"), the Talking Heads did a complete about face with "Little Creatures", presenting an album of essentially stripped down pop music.

Now granted, stripped down pop is not a bad thing-- it's just that the band appears to have surrendered their edge along with their heavy production. While the music manages to reclaim a bit of that timeless quality that made the first four Talking Heads albums so great, the music is lacking. From my perspective, I suspect it's because it's a lot more restrained-- the instrumental arrangements are a lot less edgy and Byrne's vocals fall in a comfortable middle range tenor rather than his usual higher, tense vocal.

Truthfully, none of it is BAD-- it's all pretty enough pop music ("Perfect World"), and the reflections on children on sweet and often quite clever-- albeit goofy ("Creatures of Love", "Stay Up Late"), and certainly there's no question that opener "And She Was" was destined to be a hit-- it's a great piece with a fantastic hook and a great vocal harmony on the chorus. It's just that most of the pieces are pretty much undistinguished ("Walk it Down"), and the Talking Heads were never about undistinguished songs.

The dualdisc reissue remasters the album in both stereo (CD side) and 5.1 (DVD), and it sounds great, the sonic upgrade is fantastic. Both sides also include bonus tracks-- two "early versions" and an extended remix b-side on the CD side and a pair of music videos on the DVD side.

Trutfully, had a band other than Talking Heads put this out, I'd probably rate this higher, but the bar was set pretty high by "Fear of Music" and "Remain in Light".

"Little Creature" is perhaps the Talking Heads most pop sounding album. The songs are shorter, the music is simpler and the hooks are in every song. But, there's something missing. I don't particularly care for "Give Me Back My Name" or "Creatures Of Love" and "Walk It Down" is questionable. The best tracks are "Road To Nowhere", "And She Was", "Stay Up Late" and "Television Man" with "The Lady Don't Mind" and "Perfect World" coming in second. The digital remastering is excellent and on the cd side the bonus tracks are actually interesting like the early version of "Road To Nowhere". The early version of "And She Was" is pretty much the same as the final product. The extended version of "Television Man" is just what it says and nothing special.

Unfortunately, this album doesn't lend itself to 5.1 surround. There's nothing instrumentally to fill in the void. It's much better in stereo on the cd side I think. The photos are okay and the videos for "And She Was" and "Road To Nowhere" are also okay. No lyrics are included and as with the other albums you get Jerry Harrison's take on remastering the album.

All in all, a good, but not great album.

These re-releases of the Talking Heads have been remixed beautifully - The surround sound is amazing and well worth listening to. They have taken the place of the originals for regular listening.

Since the beginning of the 80's Talking Head's had been on one long,polyrhythmic musical adventure-starting with Brian Eno and moving on with people like Bernoe Worrell and such on their full throttle funk album Speaking in Tongues. When this album emmerged a couple years later,it was beginning to look like things had really changed.For one the back and front cover art is my and many other's favorite of all the Talking Heads' albums-the busy cartoon drawing on the front,cluttered with secret messages ranging from "Planet Of The Midgets And The Giants" to the less the subtle "Talking Heads Greatest Folk Art On Earth".The back cover,featuring the band decked out in sunny,bohemian/gypsy type causual where is worthy itself of a full wall poster.And in a word sunny is a good way to describe the overall feeling of this album.It's chocked full of songs that leave the funky polyrhythms aside and focus on...well musically simplistic beats,chimming Byrds-like guitars and more of a focus on the basic band.The best places here to find great example of this are the big hits in the opener "And She Was" and closer "Road To Nowhere";no matter how you cut it,a lot of the best pop is radio friendly (even if that may be an oxymoron to some) and these two certainly are,the latter being an oddly aimless sounding march.Well,it works with the lyric.A good handful of these tunes such as "Creatures Of Love","Perfect World" and "Stay Up Late" are all bright tunes,somewhat out of character with lyrics about babies and the beauty of the planet Earth itself."Give Me Back My Name",with it's warped pop/reggae approch is the only "old style" Heads tune here.The only songs that even remotely touch on anything close to funk are the slightly more rhythmic new-wavey sounds of "Walk It Down" and "Television Man";neither are in any serious polymeter and are fairly ordinarly 80's pop underneath.The bonus tracks feature embryonic sketches of "Road To Nowhere" and "And She Was" along with an extended and somewhat funkier version of "Television Man". This is probably the only Talking Heads album that,from beginning to end concentrates soley on lightweight modern pop.Unlike much of the bands catalog there are some songs that don't stand out as much as the others,mostly because of the forced simplicity of some of the musical ideas. But this is definately a great album in a long series of excellent Talking Heads' releases and showcases how daring this band could still be,even in the most unexpected of ways.

I highly recommend all the TH re-releases. they sound amazing in 5.1 surround and the music itself is both creative and memorable in this age of drum machine/obscenity rap and turn-up-the-amps-and-scream alt. rock. No modern band even comes close to what the TH did from 77-89 and these re-issues prove that.

The one star is for the technology, not the content or sound. Boy, did I have problems with this disc (as to a lesser extent I did with the other DualDiscs). Of the five CD players in my house, this disc worked on only one of them, a newer Sony multidisc player. It did not play correctly on either my computer cd-roms, including the usually reliable Plextor (only six months old). Only my work computer allowed me to play and rip the cd correctly. I then ripped the music to a new cd-r and it plays just fine everywhere. Keep trying. It shouldn't be this way, but it is. The quality of the remastering does make up for the frustration though.