The Scrabbled Record Club:
Wherein we pick a classic album, listen to it all the way through, and review it track by track in the comments. We haven’t done one of these in a while. Rather than put it to a vote, Ima just pick a classic album and hope you guys hop on board.
So this week, I’m picking The Talking Heads – Remain in Light. I set up a new folder on the FTP for the record club, for those of you who don’t already have the album.
First person to post their review gets to pick the next album.
Comments
1. Born Under Punches: 5 – Love it. The perfect warmup for what’s to come. Such a weird, wirey, anxious, heady little song that I really can’t help but wiggle around to. It’s not quite dance music. It’s more “strange, rhythmic gyrations” music; funk for nerdy white dudes with pocket protectors.
2. Crosseyed and Painless: 4 – More funk for nerdy white dudes. Just listen to that percussion. Surely, this song is not in need of any more cowbell. I have no idea what the lyrics mean, but they make me anxious and I think that’s the point. It loses a point for being a bit aimless, but it’s still a pretty great song.
3. The Great Curve: 5 – I may be alone in this, but I really think this song is one of the single most incredible and mind-blowing pieces of music in modern history. There’s just so much happening hear. The call and return. The phase cycles and layers upon layers of percussion. The fucking harmonic counterpoint! It’s like Bach and Parliment Funkadelic had a violently hyperactive love child. Then Adrien Belew shows up and plays some of my all-time favorite guitar work. Just listen to that outro solo. Good god. And my speakers are so loud it hurts my ears and I still want it louder. What an incredible song.
4. Once in a Lifetime: 5 – Possibly my favorite song of all time. You can’t ever be sure, but this has in the past and is, at this very second, ranking #1 for my all-time favorite songs. And every time it comes on, it hits me like a kick in the gut. The lyrics are so good I can’t help but tear up when I hear them. I can’t imagine anyone listening to this song and not feeling incredibly optimistic and positive. It’s aural prozac. I want this song played at my funeral.
5. Houses in Motion: 3 – And here’s where the album takes a turn. What was frantic and explosive becomes deliberate and introspective. This song really should be a 4. It deserves a 4. The bizarre middle-eastern sounding solo-thing in the middle. The poetic lyrics. The creepy vibe… it should be a 4 or even a 5. But it comes right after “Once in a Lifetime” and suffers for it. It always ends up feeling like a let down. I often wonder if the Heads would have stuctured this album differently if it came out in the CD era. There’s a definite side a/side b distinction here and I don’t think it works as well without that pause to flip the record and give the ears a break.
6. Seen and Not Seen: 3 – Another song that probably deserves a higher rating. It’d be the best song on a lot of over people’s albums. But on this album, it doesn’t hold up to what’s before it. I’m not a lyric guy, but the lyrics on this one kill me and more than make up for a song that, musically, feels mostly like window dressing.
7. Listening Wind: 4 – Things get weirder and creepier. More crazy, abstract lyrics. This one feels distinctly 80’s in a sort of slow-motion “in the air tonight” smokey alley-way vibe. Though maybe it’s because Byrne just said “in the streets and alleys.” But I swear I started writing that sentence before that I was reminded of that lyric.
8. The Overload: 4 – By this point, Brian Eno and Adrian Belew have all but taken over the band. And I’m OK with that. This doesn’t sound or feel like the talking heads, but it’s so oppressively creepy, it could fit just as well on a Scott Walker album. While I might have rather ended the album on a high note by having one of the earlier tracks last, it’s hard to imagine this track anywhere else.
Overall rating: 5. An album that truly is greater than the sum of it’s parts, especially when taken from the side a/side b perspective. While individual songs may suffer form a lack of forward momentum, put back to back, there’s a motion that carries through to the end. And really, the rest of the album could have been David Byrne farting into a mic — so long as The Great Curve and Once in a Lifetime showed up, I’d still give it a 4.
how can you give an album a rating of 5 when you gave 1/4 of a rating of 3?
Just wondering.
“An album that truly is greater than the sum of it’s parts”
Certain songs don’t stand up as well taken on their own, but as a whole, they’re better. Side B, taken as a single piece of music, is definitely a 5.