Ken Tucker, Rolling Stone, 12/11/80

Africa Calling

Seldom in pop music history has there been a larger
gap between what black and white audiences are
listening to than there is right now. While blacks
are almost entirely uninterested in the clipped,
rigid urgency of the New Wave, it's doubtful that
more than a small percentage of Rolling Stone's
predominantly white readership knows anything at
all about the summer's only piece of culture-defining
music, Kurtis Blow's huge hit, "The Breaks."
Such a situation is both sad and ironic, because
rarely have the radical edges of black and white
music come closer to overlapping. On one hand,
the Gang of Four utilize their bass guitar every
bit as prominently and starkly as the curt bass
figures that prod the spoken verses of "The Breaks."
On the other, Chic producers Nile Rodgers and
Bernard Edwards choose to make Diana Ross sound
as sullen and alienated as Deborah Harry. None
of this has escaped the notice of Talking Heads,
however, and Remain in Light is their brave,
absorbing attempt to locate a common ground in
today's divergent, often hostile musical
community.

From the first, Talking Heads' contribution to
the avant-punk scene they helped create was
their emphasis on rhythm over beat. While the
Ramones' rockers banged and Blondie's blared,
the Heads' early songs pulsed, winding their
way past jitteriness to achieve the compelling
tension that defined a particular moment in
rock & roll history--a moment when white rock
fans wanted to dance so badly, and yet were so
intimidated by the idea, that they started
hopping straight up and down for instant relief.
By 1978, punk and disco had divided the pop
audience. What did Talking Heads do? They
recorded Al Green's "Take Me to the River."
The gesture was a heroic one.

Despite David Byrne's vocal restraint and
certain puritanical tendencies in his lyrics
to value work over pleasure ("Artists Only,"
"Don't Worry About the Government"), Talking
Heads never stopped learning from the sensuous
music that existed in a world parallel to theirs.
On 1979's Fear of Music, they made a defiant
connection with funk and disco in "I Zimbra"
and "Life During Wartime," both of which aid
in preparing us for Remain in Light's startling
avant-primitivism.

On Remain in Light, rhythm takes over. Each of
the eight compositions adheres to a single
guitar-drum riff repeated endlessly, creating
what funk musicians commonly refer to as a groove.
A series of thin, shifting layers is then added:
more jiggly percussion, glancing and contrasting
guitar figures, singing by Byrne that represents
a sharp and exhilarating break with the neurotic
and intentionally wooden vocals that had
previously characterized all Talking Heads
albums.

Though the tunes take their time (side one has
just three cuts), nobody steps out to solo here.
There isn't any elaboration of the initial
unifying riff either. Because of this, these
songs resemble the African music that the band
has taken great pains to acknowledge as Remain
in Light's guiding structure. (An even bolder
example of the African influence is My Life in
the Bush of Ghosts, an LP recorded by David Byrne
and Brian Eno that may never be issued in its
ideal form. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts uses
fixed staccato rhythm patterns in much the same
way that Eno's early solo work built whole
compositions around simple synthesizer clusters.
In place of formal singing, the album substitutes
"found" vocals: e.g., random voices taped off the
radio. Indeed, one of these voices, that of
evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman, threw the entire project
into legal limbo with a threat to sue unless it was
removed. Sire has indicated that the disc will
probably be remixed, but no release date has been
set. Which is too bad, because My Life in the Bush
of Ghosts enhances the aesthetic of Remain in Light,
and at least one of its selections, "Shaking with
My Voice," is as strange and thrilling a piece of
music as either Byrne or Eno has ever made.)

In addition to its African influences, Remain in
Light also flashes the ecstatic freedom of current
American funk, across which any number of complex
emotions and topics can roam. In both "Born Under
Punches (the Heat Goes On); and "Crosseyed and
Painless," the rhythm lurches about while always
moving forward, thrust ahead by the tough, serene
beat of the bass and percussion. Throughout,
instruments are so tightly meshed that it's often
difficult to pick out what you're hearing--or even
who's playing. As part of their let's-rethink-this-
music attitude, Talking Heads occasionally play
one another's instruments, and guests as disparate
as Robert Palmer and Nona Hendryx are enlisted.
(By now, of course, producer Brian Eno can be
considered a fifth Head.) Far from being confusing,
however, such density contributes greatly to the
mesmerizing power exerted by these elaborate dance
tunes.

Though you can follow, to some extent, the story
lines of, say, "Listening Wind" (in which an
Indian stores up weaponry to launch an assault
on plundering Americans) and the spoken fable,
"Seen and Not Seen," Remain in Light's lyrics are
more frequently utilized to describe or embody
abstract concepts. Thus, beneath the wild dance
patterns of "Crosseyed and Painless," there lurks
a dementedly sober disquisition on the nature of
facts that culminates in a hilarious, rapidly
recited list of characteristics ("Facts are simple
and facts are straight/Facts are lazy and facts are
late...") that could go on forever--and probably
does, since the song fades out before the singer
can finish reading what's on the lyric sheet.
Elsewhere, strings of words convey meaning only
through Byrne's intonation and emphasis: his
throaty, conspiratorial murmur in "Houses in
Motion" adds implications you can't extract
from lines as flyaway as "I'm walking a line-
-I'm thinking about empty motion."

In all of this lies a solution to a problem that
was clearly bothering David Byrne on Fear of Music:
how to write rock lyrics that don't yield to easy
analysis and yet aren't pretentious. Talking Heads'
most radical attempt at an answer was the use of
dadaist Hugo Ball's nonsense words as a mock-African
chant in "I Zimbra." The strategy on Remain in
Light is much more complicated and risky. In
compositions like "Born Under Punches" and
"Crosseyed and Painless," phrases are suggested
and measured, repeated and turned inside out, in
reaction to the spins and spirals of their
organizing riff-melodies. At no time does the
music change to accommodate the completion of a
conventional pop-song sentiment or clever line.

Once in a while, the experiments backfire on the
experimenters. Both "The Great Curve" and "The
Overload" are droning drags, full of screeching
guitar noise that's more freaked-out than felt.
Usually, however, the gambler's aesthetic operating
within Remain in Light yields scary, funny music to
which you can dance and think, think and dance,
dance and think, ad infinitum.


Contributed by Steve Czapla