AR: Remain in Light

Talking Heads - Remain in Light (1980)

Talking Heads made a rather overt transition over the course of a few albums in the late 1970s-80 from a quirky, sparse, post-punk sound to a thick, funky, polyrhythmic, groove-infused trance mode. The masterpiece that resulted is Remain in Light, a disc that unfailingly carries the latter set of adjectives in reviews. Every song on the album (with the possible exception of the album closer, the droning apocalyptic dirge that is "The Overload") is a variant on a generic* motif - a repeating introductory line that gets layered upon layered by other syncopated lines of wildly different timbres, David Byrne paranoid-singing o'er the top, and swelling backup vocals filling in choruses. And the lines just repeat and repeat until they achieve utter dance-infused meditation. There's a deftly controlled chaos in every track of thundering off-beat basslines, computer blips, synth drums, real drums, wowsers - it's amazing, but by invoking this spell at varying tempos and with a variety of emotional lift or crush to the singing/lyrics, the band carries an entire album with this singular trick. Of course, there's so much depth and mysticism here, that's akin to calling modal jazz a singular trick - it's formula only in its outermost abstract structure, but each song is a unique gem.

* - Meaning "of the genre," not mundane or commonplace.

As such, each of these gems is going to get the full treatment here:

"Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)" - Spastic bass riffs, echoing bird sounds, and David Byrne's best pentecostal-level preach-pleading pepper this gripping album opener. With all apologies to Flight of the Conchords, Talking Heads throw down a bleep-bloop binary solo that predates that former band's by a good 25 years. The multi-faceted, paranoid blend crescendoes to the end as a relatively calm voice arches over top with "All I want... is to breathe." Great opener; powerfully establishes what this tight disc is all about.

"Crosseyed and Painless" - a serious groove riff drops for this one from the very beginning, as this one does not so much build as have four or five voices engaged in diagonal conversations from the get-go. Bubbling organs and syncopated guitar beats (plus a punctuated guitar-synth snarl) back a number of very nice back and forths between the call and response vocal deliveries; the falsetto choruses are particularly nice( "the feeling returns / whenever we close our eyes"). This is an infectious track that not only forces dance, but sticks particular lines in the head with ease. There's a sort of airplanes flying overhead middle instrumental break, followed by "Still waiting... still waiting... HA HA HA," and that is followed by the "facts" bridge, a personal favorite in the all-time solipsistic lyric catalog. I am gyrating in my chair just typing this, if that's any indication of this tune's virulence.

"The Great Curve" - defined by its juxtaposed, simultaneous lyrics backed by a insistent drumbeat, blaring horns and spastic guitar trills. One of the definitive new wave guitar solos screams over the middle and end of this song, and the several competing volcal lines eventually all cram themselves into the same space. It is friggin' EUPHORIC. Probably the most trance-inducing / infectious of the tunes, "TGC" is a aural-visceral experience.

"Once in a Lifetime" - obviously the best known and poppiest tune here - it was even lifted for the title of a movie featuring Nicolas Cage, if I recall correctly - "OiaL" balances a frantic, confused narrator alternating with the theoretically soothing anthemic chorus. If you've ever had that experience of reading a word too many times until it's meaning is destroyed (try it with "proof") or seeing yourself in the mirror and just-for-an-instant failing to recognize your own visage, you know the emotion that Byrne's perfect verse narrator evokes. It is remarkable that such a popular tune has such a weird, jarring, experience-of-the-absurd theme, and yet you'll get all kinds of people smiling along to "Same as it ever was!" at, for instance, Fry's Grocery stores. A definite highlight of the TH catalog, this studio version is great though seriously challenged by the Stop Making Sense live take; still, a great, cathartic closer to Side A.

"Houses in Motion" - Side B slows things down a little, and "HiM" kicks things off with a sort of jazz flair, what with the screaming dark-bar horns, the depressed-cool mood, and Byrne's spoken-word verse deliveries. It's a foreboding twist on the polyrhythmic, groove structure that balances the energy of the first four tracks nicely, and makes for a great downswing, moodwise, in the middle of the disc.

"Seen and Not Seen" - A dreamlike spoken word number that occurs over yet another trance-beat. The bass work thumps on this one, as the album takes the dark turn a step further. This one is the most in the acid house vein, even if it well proceeds that genre.

"Listening Wind" - Things slow down even further as Byrne returns to yearnful singing for this continue-the-trace-theme number. The rumbling beat and syncopated bass lines / drums are still there, but the album just gets darker and darker as it rolls along. "The wind in my heart / the wind in my heart / The dust in my hand..." has its own infectious quality, and the Eastern-sounding solo that flits over top imbue this with a mystical feeling. It's a soundtrack to some kind of ritual, and this is the last rich generic tune on the album before yielding to a severe plodding crush.

"The Overload" - The album closer takes the slow down theme that defines the back half and takes it to the extreme; if anyone ever wants to know exactly what I mean by a song that drones (not in a bad way), this is the one. This number is the only somewhat weak spot of the album, imho. It's not weird that they put this plodder in the anchor slot - given the progressive tempo decline, it entirely makes sense - but everything grinds to a halt, plus Byrne's vocal is fairly flatlined. It's an aesthetic that was aimed for, I'm sure, just not the one I would have chosen.

So, what one gets in RiL is a unified selection of songs with a very natural tempo progression. It sounds like an organic thing, and that's a huge compliment to any album. It's a fantastic display of Talking Heads's attack in this period and an expert execution of this style, entirely owned by the band. The rhythms, on the faster and slower tunes alike, resonate on your kidneys; going along with that "organic" theme, it is easy to sort of live this album despite its new wave modernism / futuristic blares. This deeply-felt energy, this borderline mystic aspect, particularly when combined with the ranting lead man, gives the disc a downright religious feel, one of the many reasons it evokes such a personal connection for so many people.

That first half is just that for me, a quasi-spiritual experience that makes me want to practice some whirling dervish meditation. The opening trio in particular makes for a DI EP. Unfortunately, I don't enjoy the slow down back half quite as much as the front, primarily because of the closer. As such, this one has always fallen *just* short of the desert island suitcase. I can but recommend it: RiL is crazy kinds of unique and contains an incredible slew of moments that will worm-weave their way into your memory. Listen only if you enjoy having fantastic, mind-widening music running through that dome.

P.S. Since this is being written in the "Phish Halloween album" series, I might as well comment that covering this album definitely brought a whole new dimension to the Phish jam. The polyrhythm / funk game most certainly stuck; they covered this beast with strong horn backing in Halloween of 1996, and it undoubtedly influenced the funk years to come. The band still covers "Crosseyed & Painless" frequently, and that song has led to some of their most memorable, full-out gyrate jams. Of course, the original more than suffices for gyration purposes.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "The Great Curve"

UPDATE: Check out the song reviews at AllMusic for this album (the Rs to the left of the track titles). Good descriptions there, though you'll notice that we overlap quite a bit - this song-set as an emphatic, unmistakable stamp.

UPDATE 2: I'm really struggling with the rec on this one as it really is a fantastic album. The two sides are starkly different, and I continually appreciate the dark, way-before-ProTools grandfather of techno/house aspect to the back half. In the end, it comes down to the Eno-inspired (and, it turns out, Eno-written closer track). It's cool, sppoky and bleak and all, but I for whatever reason can't have that almost exactly 15% (6:01 out of 40:05) of the album is taken up by the plod. This is a hard line to maintain, as you'll hopefully learn soon; The Beatles is sans doubt a DI album, and there's a healthy chunk of corresponding plod there, too ("Revolution #9" and "Good Night" make up the last painful 11:30 of that set). So what do I know? In the end, I'm forced to rely on that good ol' gut feeling, and perhaps because of the dynamics of the Side A v. Side B - the former really is some of my favorite tune-age on earth - I have to leave this just shy of the mark. So, essentially, I'm repeating myself, though with a repeated emphasis that this is *that close!*