Listening Post: Talking Heads - Fear of Music

Talking Heads - Fear of Music - Fear of Music

"I Zimbra", a percussion heavy, african-rhythm layered song, opens Remain in Light, and, like the first album, suggests a much more accessible experience for the listener than we've been used to from TH. Oh, it's still more concerned with noise-scapes than being a "song", but it makes you want to tap your feet, at least.
Fear not, experimental music lover, "Mind" follows with production that seems to touch on all the tropes of the era. Spacey synth sounds, minimalist spaces between all the notes, vocal gymnastics instead of...um...singing...Byrne and Eno seem determined to turn Talking Heads into a David Bowie-esque art band. It isn't as though the band is afraid of music, per se. They seem to be allergic to songs. "Paper", the first cut that feels like the album is settling into itself, could have easily fallen off Devo's Are We Not Men? (Another Eno produced record). As it progresses, Fear of Music sounds less like an album of songs you would recommend to a friend than a soundtrack to an intense and paranoid urban warrior living in a post-government takeover world. Which may be the intent. Unless I'm reading into things. But "Cities" plays just like that and the very next song, "Life During Wartime" (my personal favorite Heads song ever) is pretty blatant about that subject matter. Which means that I could be right in my interpretation of intent or I let that song inform the rest of the record for me. Either way...The live version is better, the studio version just...peters out...
From there we're back in paranoia land with "Memories Can't Wait", a pulsating, pummeling onslaught of nervosa led by Mr. Gangly Big Suit himself. As it builds it gets more and more tense and results in being one of the only songs on the album not to fade out, but actually end.
Fear of Music pops up on just about every "Best of" list. Whether its the Best of the 70s or all time. I don't agree. I think critics are falling all over themselves to show that they are smarter than the average Kiss listener. They're not. They're buying into pretension as smarts. They are not the same at all.

Grade: C
ASide: Life During Wartime
BlindSide: Cities
DownSide: Mind