VTG Talkingheads Remain In Light 1980 LP 33 rpm Sire Records Vinyl NM/Sleeve G+

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Remain in Light's startling avant-primitivism. 

On Remain in Light, rhythm takes over. Each of the eight compositions adheres to a single guitar-drum riff repeated endlessly, creating what funk musicians commonly refer to as a groove. A series of thin, shifting layers is then added: more jiggly percussion, glancing and contrasting guitar figures, singing by Byrne that represents a sharp and exhilarating break with the neurotic and intentionally wooden vocals that had previously characterized all Talking Heads albums.

Though the tunes take their time (side one has just three cuts), nobody steps out to solo here. There isn't any elaboration of the initial unifying riff either. Because of this, these songs resemble the African music that the band has taken great pains to acknowledge as Remain in Light's guiding structure. In addition to its African influences, Remain in Light also flashes the ecstatic freedom of current American funk, across which any number of complex emotions and topics can roam. In both "Born under Punches (the Heat Goes On)" and "Crosseyed and Painless," the rhythm lurches about while always moving forward, thrust ahead by the tough, serene beat of the bass and percussion. Throughout, instruments are so tightly meshed that it's often difficult to pick out what you're hearing---or even who's playing. As part of their let's-rethink-this-music attitude, Talking Heads occasionally play one another's instruments, and guests as disparate as Robert Palmer and Nona Hendryx are enlisted. (By now, of course, producer Brian Eno can be considered a fifth Head.) Far from being confusing, however, such density contributes greatly to the mesmerizing power exerted by these elaborate dance tunes.

Though you can follow, to some extent, the story lines of, say, "Listening Wind" (in which an Indian stores up weaponry to launch an assault on plundering Americans) and the spoken fable, "Seen and Not Seen," Remain in Light's lyrics are more frequently utilized to describe or embody abstract concepts. Thus, beneath the wild dance patterns of "Crosseyed and Painless," there lurks a dementedly sober disquisition on the nature of facts that culminates in a hilarious, rapidly recited list of characteristics ("Facts are simple and facts are straight/Facts are lazy and facts are late... ") that could go on forever ---and probably does, since the song fades out before the singer can finish reading what's on the lyric sheet. Elsewhere, strings of words convey meaning only through Byrne's intonation and emphasis: his throaty, conspiratorial murmur in "Houses in Motion" adds implications you can't extract from lines as flyaway as "I'm walking a line--- I'm thinking about empty motion."

In all of this lies a solution to a problem that was clearly bothering David Byrne on Fear of Music: how to write rock lyrics that don't yield to easy analysis and yet aren't pretentious. Talking Heads' most radical attempt at an answer was the use of da-daist Hugo Ball's nonsense words as a mock-African chant in "I Zimbra." The strategy on Remain in Light is much more complicated and risky. In compositions like "Born under Punches" and "Crosseyed and Painless," phrases are suggested and measured, repeated and turned inside out, in reaction to the spins and spirals of their organizing riff-melodies. At no time does the music change to accommodate the completion of a conventional pop-song sentiment or clever line.

Once in a while, the experiments backfire on the experimenters. Both "The Great Curve" and "The Overload" are droning drags, full of screeching guitar noise that's more freaked-out than felt. Usually, however, the gambler's aesthetic operating within Remain in Light yields scary, funny music to which you can dance and think, think and dance, dance and think, ad infinitum.

Track Listing

1. Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)

2. Cross-Eyed and Painless

3. The Great Curve

4. Once in a Lifetime

5. Houses in Motion

6. Seen and Not Seen

7. Listening Wind

8. The Overload

Details

Playing Time: 40 min.

Contributing Artists: Brian Eno, Adrian Belew, Robert Palmer, Nona Hendryx, Jon Hassell

Distributor: Alternative Dis. Alliance

Recording Type: Studio

Recording Mode: Stereo

SPAR Code: n/a

Album Notes

Talking Heads: David Byrne (vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, percussion); Jerry Harrison (guitar, keyboards, bass, percussion); Tina Weymouth (keyboards, bass, percussion); Chris Frantz (keyboards, drums, percussion).Additional personnel: Nona Hendryx (vocals); Adrian Belew (guitar); Brian Eno (vocals, keyboards, bass); Robert Palmer, Jon Hassell.Recorded at Compass Point Studios, Nassau, The Bahamas, and Sigma Sound, New York, New York.Though the previous album FEAR OF MUSIC provided a bit of foreshadowing, Talking Heads fans could never have guessed what was in store for them with the release of REMAIN IN LIGHT. A visionary work of innovation and inspiration, it's arguably one of the finest albums of the 1980s. The band leaves behind the two-guitars-over-a-quirky-rock-beat ethic of their previous work, adopting a funky, modal approach. Abandoning traditional song form and chord progressions, the tunes here are built around layers of overdubbed keyboard, guitar and percussion parts that weave around each other in an almost fugue-like manner, relying on the adding and subtracting of elements in the mix for dynamics, instead of on chord changes and structural development.It was a radical approach for a rock band, and it's reflected in the lyrics as well. Byrne abandons his urban paranoia of old in favor of a more spiritual, third world-influenced style of writing. Adrian Belew injects some grit with his postpunk-psychedelia guitar work (suggestive of his upcoming work with King Crimson, as is the overall sound of REMAIN IN LIGHT). This one is for the ages.

This album ships in a custom record box.