6/30/2023 0 Comments Burnin down the house song![]() ![]() ![]() There's a spirit of Sly and Robbie and maybe ESG here that really has to bloom from a rhythm section. While this often yields interesting and even evocative results, the lack of any real narrative agency in many of the songs holds the listener at a frosty remove - if the writer/singer has no interest in telling a story or expressing genuine feeling, how should the listener respond?īurning Down the House was developed from a Frantz/Weymouth jam, and given their success with the Tom Tom Club album not long prior, this period stands as perhaps the couple’s creative high point of influence in Talking Heads history. Lyrically, Byrne opted to use a William Burroughs-esque cut-and-paste technique to piece together the disjointed phrases for Speaking In Tongues. These pseudo melodies are brought to life on Stop Making Sense, and represent the beginning of Byrne’s strongest vocal period (imo from 1984-1989), a time where his voice matured appreciably. In nearly all cases I much prefer the Stop Making Sense versions of the Speaking In Tongues songs the integration of keyboard maestro Bernie Worrell, percussionist Steve Scales, guitarist Alex Weir and vocalists Lyn Maybry and Edna Holt help transform the deliberately flattened energy of the studio product into something far more uplifting.ĭavid Byrne’s vocals are intentionally stilted in their Speaking In Tongues incarnation, with an ambiguous relationship to their own melodic aspirations. The Talking Heads sound of this period has come in and out of vogue a number of times since 1983, and continues to have its proponents today. With Chris Frantz’s snare drum treated and compressed to sound as though he’s playing an electronic kit, Tina Weymouth’s flat, cold bass sound, the multi-tracked synthesizers and heavily treated vocals, much of the work on Speaking In Tongues sounds a product of its time.
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