Mitchell Cohen, Creem, 1/81

Play That Funky Music White Boy

"The world moves on a woman's hips
The world moves and it swivels and bops"

Whew, that's a relief. You see the title "The Great Curve"
on a Talking Heads LP and there's the suspicion that the
song is probably about a metaphysical equator or something.
You know David Byrne and Brian Eno: real cards. The Leopold
and Loeb of fascinatin' rhythms, not likely to break into
bop-shoo-wops at a moment's notice. But Remain In Light,
their calculatedly hypnotic examination of white rock's
burden, is cerebral body music, the weirdest soulfinger
on earth. The second side is more ambient than apocalyptic,
but side one's trilogy--"Born Under Punches," "Crosseyed
and Painless" and "The Great Curve"--is an upbeat burst
of absurdist funk, with Byrne playing a synapse-snapped
rapper and the band laying down riffs that are downright
magical.

Talking Heads have always--from their seven-inch start,
"Love --> A Building On Fire," a chain of logical
emotionalism in which that arrow implied all--reminded
me of the Bronx High School of Science, which is probably
why I've approached them with a mixture of attraction
and wariness. Give a guy like Byrne a box of tinker toys
and he'll build you a metropolis with a working sewer
system; then, with colored pencils, he'll chart the
links between the chamber of commerce and the red light
district. A dangerous boy. On Remain In Light he's like
a whizkid stoned on a whiff of the Famous Flames, caught
in his own beat, mumbling disconnected phrases ("the hand
speaks...well, I'm a tumbler...born under punches...I'm
so thin") on the stairwell. Not since Love's Arthur Lee
has mulatto-rock sounded like it was concocted on a
Bunsen burner.

So take this T-Funk as another step in the path trod
(unwittingly?) by Gary U.S. Bonds on "Getting A Groove"
(flip of "Seven Day Weekend"): there are no "normal"
chord changes, bridges, choruses, or many long solos,
just on-and-on patterns over which the lyric line
creates melody. At times the tension produces a stiff,
Police-Cars alienation effect. At times it is riveting;
on "Crosseyed" (the single) Byrne breaks into a list
of about a dozen statements about "facts" ("...don't
stain the furniture," "...are useless in emergencies,"...)
and it's like Godard gone goofy; "Curve" is a religious
ceremony with psychedelic guitar, three-part vocal harmony,
and the partytime atmosphere of the Peppermint Lounge
("She's gonna hold/it move/it hold it/move it..."); and
"Punches" latches on to a figure that the band doesn't
want to let slip away. Can't blame them.

The more "contemplative" tunes on Remain in Light lack
the propulsive persuasiveness of those side-one rave-ups
but are not without their own concrete jungle swing and
sway. The terrorist who "plants devices in the free
trade zone" in "Listening Wind," accompanied by deceptive
calm, "Seen And Not Seen"'s character (described in
deadpan narration like "The Gift" from White Light/
White Heat) who meditates on the malleability of facial
structure, the twilight zone domestic situation of
"Once In A Lifetime" (with the eerie chant "same as it
ever was"): all are real, and realized, subjective
reaches. Only "The Overload," an overlong, over-obscure
stretch most representative, I suspect, of the so-far
unreleased Eno-Byrne LP My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts,
dims the project (that, and the relative anonymity that
the format imposes on Weymouth, Frantz and Harrison).

It's all hook, or anti-hook, depending on how you look
at it. It's music that sounds cornered and liberated at
the same time, and quirky beyond comprehension.
Remain In Light is to these ears the first time that
an album by Talking Heads is as likable as the theory
of Talking Heads is intriguing. The band is chasing
something that may ultimately be out of reach, but at
this juncture I wouldn't bet against them.



Contributed by Steve Czapla