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When people think of the 80s, they think big hair, big shoulder pads, Dynasty, red braces, Gordon Gekko, or Margaret Thatcher, 3 million unemployed and the Falklands. Music similarly elicits a polarised reaction. Either you have the day-glo synth-happy pop or the morose gloom of “The Smiths” and “Joy Division”, or “Sonic Youth’s” plain weirdness. A band that has partially been forgotten by all except hipsters though, deserves more recognition from that era: “Talking Heads”.
Emerging from the same bohemian New York scene that spawned “The Velvet Underground” and “Television” “Talking Heads” took the world by storm with their album ‘Remain in Light’. Released in 1980, there still nothing quite like it. Unlike other cult bands, who had a sound that was easier to emulate, this album was put together with help from a supercomputer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The reason for this are the extensive polyrhythms, based on African folk music (if this album had been part of the Music GCSE syllabus, I’m very sure I’d have performed far less dismally). The intent was to have no single person leading the band, but for it to be a communal effort.
If this sounds like 'worthy' music you’d typically run a mile away from, I urge you not to do so. The rhythms have a hypnotic looping quality, produced by the master Brian Eno, and as they loop some musicians come to the foreground and others disappear into the background. The best example of this is “Houses in Motion”, a song that you can easily listen to several times in one go it’s that good. “I turn around” lead singer David Byrne moans “I’m moving backwards and forwards/ I’m moving twice as much as I was before”. The live recordings are even better with the five additional performers; rather than sounding computerised or processed as you’d expect from such a technical song, there is a spontaneity to the performances that touch on the best of funk, rock and even jazz.
The album “Remain in Light” is often praised, and it’s not hard to see why. Like “Joy Division’s” ‘Unknown Pleasures’ (released about the same time) the production atmosphere creates huge sonic atmospheres. At one point I could imagine that the haunting ‘Listening Wind’, a song all about isolation and the lack of empathy, would be the perfect song for a spaceship to send out as a distress call. “Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)” is an assertive clarion call of a song that features the most aggressive use of polyrhythms. “Once in a Livetime” was the song that broke into the UK mainstream with its infectious chorus that is surprisingly accessible. ‘The Overload’ finishes the album with its heavy, dark production values, perhaps better listened to with the lights on.
'Remain in Light' is over thirty years old but there is nothing about it that has been endlessly repeated or feels dated. It does not feel that is part of a canonical division, like The Doors that must be accepted without criticism. I urge you to seek it out and enjoy for yourself one the more sterling musical attempts of the last few generations.
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