Wollman Rink, New York City, August 27th 1980

Talking Heads Change Their Shape

review by Jon Pareles
published in Rolling Stone 30/10/1980


As city dwellers with open ears and a fondness for repetition, it
was natural for Talking Heads to turn to funk - they were more than
halfway there already. But only those who knew about the group's
set at the Heatwave festival in Toronto a week earlier expected
them to show up in Central Part as a ten-piece band with a spare
keyboardist (Bernie Worrell, formerly with Funkadelic), guitarist
(Adrian Belew, formerly with David Bowie), bassist (Busta Jones),
percussionist (Steve Scales) and vocalists (Dolette McDonald and
Nona Hendryx). Supporting players joined the four cert Heads in
familiar songs - Below and Scale in "Warning Sign," the singers
in "Cities" -until the full lineup was mustered for a densely
polyrhythmic "I Zimbra," an appropriate lead-in to the songs from
their forthcoming album, Remain in Light.

The new material - and the Nigerian music that played over the PA
before their set - showed that the Heads have been listening to
both American and African funk. Like "I Zimbra," David Byrne's
latest compositions stay on one chord for long stretches but are
broken up by all sorts of percussive interplay. The extended band
was designed to show clashes in every register. Tina Weymouth's
stolid bar line versus Jones' syncopated thunks; Belew's sustained,
weightless leads versus Byrne's choppy chording and Worrell's
chattering clavinet; Byrne's reedy voice versus his gospel-toned
backups. Most of the new songs also used interlocking vocal lines,
with short interjections punctuating long, chantlike phrases. The
many layers of cross-rhythm kept the songs from sounding like
disco, and while there was jamming galore, the tunes weren't
stretched.

With all the people on-stage, Byrne acted more like a bandleader
than a berseker. In fact, the bigger band robbed "Take Me to the
River" of its psychotic undertones, making it almost celebratory.
Old Talking Heads fans may have been disappointed to see Byrne
trading in dramatic tension for more rhythm and to hear the band
sounding more like P-Funk (especially during "Houses in Motion")
than the Velvets or the 1910 Fruitgum Company. But he's too
early to tell exactly what groove the Heads will stay with. This
band found plenty of them.