More Songs About Buildings And Food - Talking Heads (1978)
Ideated from: In a way, the 80s started in 1978. A lot of huge 80s artists and their signature sounds were just debuting or just getting up to speed in 1978.
Yeah, I’m gonna talk about Brian Eno again. It seems like I do all the time, but that’s really down to how heavily involved he has been in so much music I love.
Talking Heads are not an Eno creation. They were a fun, quirky bunch of art students with a massively wide interest in all sorts of different musical styles. They were loosely held together by David Byrne, who is a bit of a musical genius in his own right. That’s a disservice to everyone else, though, because the band was a confluence of four very ambitious and talented musicians.
After their first record of herky-jerky postpunk, they connected with Eno to see what else they could get up to. They did not disappoint.
MSABAF is a wildly eclectic mishmash of pop, prog, rock, funk, and glam. The non-stop chug of the rhythm section, often complemented by by Byrne’s 80s-ready thin and wiry guitar sound, creates its own space for itself, and you start to see the band elevate themselves from the New York punk scene to higher art.
Tracks I Liked
Thank You For Sending Me An Angel - a quick jumping off point from what they’d done on their first record into much more ambitious territory.
The Good Thing - this one might have come straight off an Eno record, both lyrically and musically. But they still manage to give it their own stamp on top of all that.
Take Me To The River - Al Green’s soul classic, recently identified by my wife as “the Billy Bass song”. But the Heads do a great take on it that lots of people likely know better than the original.
