Talking Heads: 77, Talking Heads, 1977, :38
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
I've been a Talking Heads (and David Byrne) fan for a long time. A long time. And yet, I never got around to listening to much of their debut album. What a waste of three decades! This album remains today so disjointed, so strange, so punk in its ethos and New Wave in its sound, that it must have sounded positively Martian when it was released. Syncopated rhythms, funky choppy bass, Byrne's staccato yelping, his lyrics gazing puzzled at the daily life of other people through the small end of a telescope. "Don't expect me to explain your indecisions / Go talk to your analyst, isn't that what they're paid for?" I don't think anyone else in music (except maybe Loudon Wainwright, and he'd be doing it self-referentially) would voice such thoughts. And nobody else would chirp "Oh the boys want to talk / Would like to talk about those problems / And the girls say they're concerned / Concerned with decisiveness / And it's a hard logic to follow / And the girls get lost / And the boys say they're concerned." Presumably, when Byrne finishes his study of humanity he will ascend back to his home in the stars. Favorite tracks: "Tentative Decisions," "Psycho Killer," "Pulled Up."
