Talking Heads - Remain in Light
#403
Highlighteds:
Born Under Punches
Crosseyed and Painless
Once in a Lifetime
Seen and Not Seen
Listening Wind
Review:
(Note: Since this record has been so fundamental to my life, I reluctantly decided to forego personal history and attempt to narrate the experience of just listening with headphones on.)
Side 1 opens with an aural punch to the gut (Ah!), and then we’re inside a computer. David Byrne’s speaking character (call him DB) orders us to “Take a look at these hands!” He’s a government man, a tumbler, so thin. A soothing set of voices reasonably asks to breathe, punctuated by the more insistent DB commenting in the margins. The lyrics intrigue: “Falling bodies tumble ‘cross the floor,” while DB tartly replies, “Thank you,” and “No thanks.” “Don’t even mention it.” The instrumental solos imitate computer diodes, punctuated by yelping and gurgling. The vocal melody repeats: “The heat goes on,” later looping over “Won’t you breathe with me?” The whole thing feels incredibly unsettling. Something is about to break, but we can’t figure out what it is, or if it even matters. Born Under Punches maintains its edge for a thrilling near six minutes, then fades out, never resolving. It builds suspense for what comes next and sets up the experience of the entire album perfectly.
Tracks 2 and 3 are built on grooves that might have fit on “Fear Of Music,” but here they’re not only augmented by Eno electronica, but also heavier and funkier. Guitar sounds slink and slide from ear to ear. Polyrhythms dare you not to shake your ass, while lyrics dance just outside your consciousness. Again, something’s going on, but it’s not clear what. DB informs us that “Facts don’t do what I want them to…Facts just twist the truth around…” on Crosseyed and Painless, and “Seems like the world knows nothing at all” on The Great Curve. Both songs incorporate overlapping lines that could serve as warnings, orders, or even a strange kind of rejoicing; eventually everything is unintelligible and repeats almost to the point of annoyance, then the guitar takes over and attempts to drive us off the edge of a cliff. Exhilarating.
Forget the video for a moment, and just listen to Once In A Lifetime. Putting the song in headphones is a reminder of how incredibly well produced and arranged it is. We’re surrounded by a sea of synth textures; thumped by relentless three-note bass riffs; pelted by percussion above, beside & behind; and attacked by DB’s infamous evangelist. It’s all in second person, too. It’s not the preacher, it’s YOU saying to yourself, “My God, what have I done?!” Almost 4 minutes in, the guitars arrive to rescue us from drowning, but DB won’t let up. “Here comes the twister,” he declares during the fadeout. “Same as it ever was.” We have been warned.
Side 2 immediately feels different. “I knew my heart was in the right place,” DB narrates over a less threatening, more chatty groove. The memory of a thousand years gives way to present tense: “I’m walking along, I’m thinking about things in motion.” Two funky guitar riffs - one tentative, one pushy - accompany a sung duet between high and low octaves. Then an elephant enters and does a strange dance. We pass by minarets, market stalls, Houses in Motion. We could almost get comfortable here.
Storytime continues with a long narration about an unnamed protagonist, a thought experiment that works so well because it’s delivered over the most melodic groove on the album. Seen And Not Seen feels more structured and orderly than anything we’ve heard so far, but it ends with a chilling twist. “He wonders if he too might have made a similar mistake.”
The seemingly mellow flow and storytelling mode continues, but instead of philosophically musing, Listening Wind follows a character on a mission, delivering a package to “the American man” whose presence represents disruption and despair for his people. Calling his friend the wind to guide him, he plants devices in the free trade zone. Listen closely and those seemingly random synth bleats become sinister, the gliding rhythm a false lull preceding the blasts that will justifiably blow the unwanted intruders to kingdom come. It takes awhile to realize they are us.
The sense of foreboding that began the album hits home in the final song, but not in the way we might have expected. “Terrible signal too weak to even recognize... I’m touched by your pleas...” Byrne sings over the most droning, least grooving track of all. “A change in the weather… The center is missing…” he continues. Our spoken narrator, DB, is nowhere to be found. Those mostly backgrounded noises from before emerge front and center, revealing themselves as aspects of an inevitable future. “The gentle collapsing of every surface. We travel on the quiet road… The Overload.” This computer we’re inside is slowly breaking down, and our world with it. Quietly, gradually, things fall apart, the center cannot hold, and then it all fades away.
“Remain In Light” arrived in 1980 from what felt like a mysterious and distant future, one I couldn’t quite grasp. I still feel the same way listening to it 40 years later.
https://open.spotify.com/album/1JvXxLsm0PxlGH4LXzqMGq?si=viVHGqz9RPa1y5SPmF-Pvg
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