Talking Heads had ushered in the eighties with Remain in Light, a cacophony of intricate rhythms that slowly revealed themselves accompanied by David Bryne’s usual wonderful absurdisms. Speaking in Tongues could not ascend to the same great heights, a reflection more on the brilliance of Remain in Light rather than any musical shortcomings. However, Speaking in Tongues would become the band’s commercial breakthrough and provide them with their sole top-ten US hit in the form of ‘Burning Down the House’. Popularity never seemed particularly high on the band’s agenda, but Speaking in Tongues kickstarted a period of commercial success, aided by the rise of MTV.
Remain in Light capped off a hectic four years for the band, and the group took a hiatus following its tour, allowing them to pursue solo interests. Ahead of the release of Remain in Light, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz had briefly toyed with leaving the band and their side project, The Tom Tom Club, allowed them an opportunity to exercise their excess creativity. The Tom Tom Club was largely formed from the duo’s repeated trips to Barbados. The group featured numerous musicians from what became dubbed the Compass Point All-Stars Family- a recording band started by the studios’ owner and founder of Island Records, Chris Blackwell.
The Tom Tom Club’s eponymous debut, released in 1981, was a moderate success, driven by the success of the irrepressibly funky single, ‘Genius of Love’. Jerry Harrison’s solo effort, The Red and Black, may not have mirrored his bandmates’ commercial numbers, but it was equally impressive. A talented multi-instrumentalist, Harrison borrowed upon the influences of Remain in Light while showcasing his songwriting talents. Like Bryne, Harrison showed a penchant for a quirky phrase or two, but his songwriting felt more involved and less observational than Bryne’s. Not to be outdone by the rest of the band, Bryne was similarly busy, writing the musical score for the choreographer Twyla Tharp’s dance project, The Catherine Wheel.
To fill the gap between albums and satisfy the appetite of their fans, the band released the brilliant live album, The Name of the Band is Talking Heads, in 1982. The title was a nod to Bryne’s often dry, limited stage patter, but the record demonstrated that the band was anything but limited. Bryne’s performances were as energetic as they were eccentric, while the band showed that their impeccable rhythm was organic, not formulaic. The album showed the band’s seamless development in sound and style, encompassing performances from 1977 to 1980, and a later reissue would include performances from the vaunted Remain in Light tour.
And so, onto Speaking in Tongues, which saw the band depart with their legendary producer, Brian Eno. The band produced the record itself, and Speaking in Tongues was far less dense than its predecessors, opting for insistency rather than intricacy as the band found a groove and stuck with it. It has a trance-like quality, immediacy and accessibility that Remain in Light lacked, but without the interesting and rewarding layers that could be peeled back over multiple listens. Sonically, it wasn’t a huge departure in sound; the afrobeat-inspired rhythms remained, but with an added eighties sheen as the band utilised synths to a greater degree than ever before.
Similarly to Remain in Light, songs evolved from loose jams, and ‘Burning Down the House’ was influenced by Frantz’s recent visit to a Parliament-Funkadelic concert at Madison Square Garden. Rather than building upon Bryne’s seeming obsession with buildings, the song’s title derives from a popular P-Funk audience chant: “Burn down the house”, which Bryne adopted into the song’s centrepiece. ‘Burning Down the House’ is essentially an ecstatic new wave, funk crossover driven by Weymouth’s wobbling bassline and the track’s percussive polyrhythms alongside some sci-fi-like synths. Bryne’s lyrics are bizarre, dealing in strange commands and statements like: “Here’s your ticket, pack your bags” and “Hey, you might need a raincoat”.
Bryne’s anxieties seem to return on the repetitive groove of ‘Making Flippy Floppy’ as he yelps, “Somebody is waiting in the hallway/Somebody is falling down the stairs”. ‘Making Flippy Floppy’ feels futuristic with its mechanical groove, but its electric twang gives it an eerie quality as Bryne offers up an endless stream of platitudes that loosely seem to form a rebellion against conformity. The creepy violin section from Indian musician L. Shanker provides the song’s weirdest moment, as it sounds like he’s torturing his instrument, adding to the track’s slightly haunting air. ‘Pull up the Roots’ similarly seems to encourage rebellion, Bryne telling us: “I don’t mind some slight disorder” as the song anxiously propels forward.
Bryne’s words may be beguiling, but they feel secondary to the music, an example of how the band’s approach to writing had become less Bryne-centric. Musically the grooves are as straightforward as you will ever get from Talking Heads, and that’s not meant in a derivative manner. ‘Girlfriend Is Better’ perfectly combines Bryne’s hoarse, paranoid yelps with Weymouth’s bouncing bass, Harrison’s slick, slippery riffs, and Frantz’s disco-like drumming to create a triumphant chorus, while guest star Bernie Worral (Parliament/Funkadelic) provides some pulsing blasts from the synths. While ‘Slippery People’ is a wonderful piece of funky electro-pop with a super catchy gospel-style chorus.
‘Slippery People’ is all about Bryne’s disdain for preachers, and appropriately for an album entitled Speaking in Tongues, it’s not the only time he delves into religious imagery. Backed by a stomping rhythm and some low-slung riffs on ‘Swamp’, Bryne describes how “The devil, he has a plan”. But the devil Bryne is referring to seems more capitalistic, and the semi-apocalyptic atmosphere he creates is driven more by dictatorship and human corruption. Bryne always appears to be grappling with something, and on the creepy reggae twang of ‘I Get Wild/Wild Gravity’, his enemy seems to be reality: “Go ahead and pull the curtains/Check to see if I’m still here”. While on the gently convulsing ‘Moon Rocks’, he goes from sceptic (“Flying saucers, levitation/Yo! I could do that”) to full-blown psychedelic escapist (“I ate a rock from the moon”).
Bryne’s stream-of-conscious style is made captivating by his ever-changing vocal tones, and there’s something compelling about the confusion he creates. Does he know what he’s talking about? That’s what makes the final track, ‘This Must Be The Place’, so surprising; it’s as direct as Bryne has ever sounded, albeit it’s a love song built around messages of emotional resonance rather than a narrative sequence. But with its beautiful melody and Bryne’s most tender vocal performance since ‘The Big Country’, it showed that Bryne could emote as well as perplex. With its chiming riffs, warm bassline, and Frantz’s unyielding rhythm, the band has rarely sounded so peaceful.