Feelings

The album 'Feelings' was released in Europe on May 20 1997 and in the US on June 17 1997.

The album was produced by Morcheeba, Lori Goldston/Black Cat Orchestra, Andres Levin & Camus Celli, Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald V. Casale (both former members of Devo).

Addicted To Noise staff writer Gil Kaufman reports: Like his old pals (okay, ex-pals) in The Heads, David Byrne is making his new album a collaborative effort. And also like the Heads (who had guest turns from non-mainstream peers like Richard Hell, Maria McKee and Gavin Friday on their 1996 album), Byrne has chosen an eclectic list of left-of-the-dial folks for the project.

The nervous-mannered singer, whose last solo album was 1994's self-titled affair, will release Feelings in early June. The CD features a collaboration with members of Devo on the song "Wicked Little Doll" and a duet with Paula Cole on "Miss America," which also features vocals from Betty ("Clean-Up Woman") Wright, co-produced by Miami producer Joe Galdo (Angelique Kidjo).

Like many of the partnerships, the Galdo track was recorded on location, at the producer's Miami home, in keeping with a mood Byrne was trying to create. "I realized two things after having written and made demos of a number of songs," says Byrne in some notes from the sessions. "That home studio recordings now sound as good as big-name studio records, and often the vibe there is more conducive to creativity. Secondly, the songs appear to be in a wide variety of styles that might best be interpreted by different groups of musicians."

To that end, Byrne also traveled to Morcheeba's Clapham, England home studios last year to work on a group of nine songs, which the group's guitarist, Paul Godfrey told ATN included "Daddy Go Down," with younger brother Ross Godfrey on sitar, along with a Cajun fiddler, turntable scratching and hip-hop beats. Some of the other tracks, "Fuzzy Freaky," "Amnesia" and "Dance on Vaseline," incorporate such disparate elements as swing, reggae, funk and acoustic country folk.

Morcheeba played on and co-produced the tracks with Byrne, as well as co-producing a handful of other tracks on the album. Godfrey said the sessions came about when Byrne heard an advance tape of the band's debut trip-hop inflected Who Can You Trust? and phoned them up. "We were thrilled, to say the least, we grew up listening to the Talking Heads and we're really big fans of his," said Godfrey. "We always thought he was a mad kind of guy who'd be really interesting to work with, but he's actually sort of more balanced and stable than most people you'd ever meet in your life."

Byrne also trekked to Seattle to work with that city's Black Cat Orchestra to record the last track "They Are In Love" and to New York to record with musician Hahn Rowe and C'n'A (Andreas and Camus), who he had worked with previously on a Red, Hot & Rio track (a cover of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Aguas Du Marco").

Tracks:

1. Fuzzy Freaky
2. Miss America
3. A Soft Seduction
4. Dance on Vaseline
5. The Gates of Paradise
6. Amnesia
7. You Don't Know me
8. Daddy go Down
9. Finite = Alright
10. Wicked Little Doll
11. Burnt by the Sun
12. The Civil Wars
13. ...
14. They are in Love

'Finite Alright' was played live before during the "In Constant Motion World Tour" in 1994.

Early 1998 the album was followed by the album "The Visible Man", which contains nine remixes of songs from "Feelings".

"Feelings" Advance promo