Talking Heads
Talking Heads: 77
Original LP release: Sep 16, 1977
This CD released: 2006-02-22
Label: Warner Music Japan / Sire
Catalog #: WPCR-75151
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From cduniverse:
Talking Heads: David Byrne (vocals, guitar); Jerry Harrison (guitar, keyboards, background vocals); Tina Weymouth (bass); Chris Frantz (drums).
Recorded at Sundragon Studios, New York, New York.
When they burst out of the New York underground/CBGB's movement, the Heads stood apart from the pack because not only were they unlike anything that gone before, they were even anomalous to their contemporaries. A million miles from the detached irony of Blondie or the willful primitivism of the Ramones, the Talking Heads virtually invented geek-rock, setting the stage for everyone from the Violent Femmes to They Might Be Giants. Lyrically, David Byrne came off as the guy who thought too much about everything. Fortunately, he also happened to be a unique visionary, whose quirky, hyper-cerebral modernism echoed the work of poet John Ashbery and "serious" composer Robert Ashley.
All this high-mindedness doesn't detract from the infectious rock & roll appeal of the tunes on the band's debut album, though. Their twitchy, preppies-on-amphetamines rhythms and semi-neurotic gestalt fueled tunes like twisted anthem "Psycho Killer" and the jubilant "Pulled Up." Byrne's high, yelping tenor was the perfect complement to the band's tightly-wound but kinetic rhythms, and 77 is an auspicious debut.
AMG review by William Ruhlmann:
Though they were the most highly touted new wave band to emerge from the CBGB's scene in New York, it was not clear at first whether Talking Heads' Lower East Side art rock approach could make the subway ride to the midtown pop mainstream successfully. The leadoff track of the debut album, Talking Heads: 77, "Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town," was a pop song that emphasized the group's unlikely roots in late-'60s bubblegum, Motown, and Caribbean music. But the "Uh-Oh" gave away the group's game early, with its nervous, disconnected lyrics and David Byrne's strained voice. All pretenses of normality were abandoned by the second track, as Talking Heads finally started to sound on record the way they did downtown: the staggered rhythms and sudden tempo changes, the odd guitar tunings and rhythmic, single-note patterns, the non-rhyming, non-linear lyrics that came across like odd remarks overheard from a psychiatrist's couch, and that voice, singing above its normal range, its falsetto leaps and strangled cries resembling a madman trying desperately to sound normal. Talking Heads threw you off balance, but grabbed your attention with a sound that seemed alternately threatening and goofy. The music was undeniably catchy, even at its most ominous, especially on "Psycho Killer," Byrne's supreme statement of demented purpose. Amazingly, that song made the singles chart for a few weeks, evidence of the group's quirky appeal, but the album was not a big hit, and it remained unclear whether Talking Heads spoke only the secret language of the urban arts types or whether that could be translated into the more common tongue of hip pop culture. In any case, they had succeeded as artists, using existing elements in an unusual combination to create something new that still managed to be oddly familiar. And that made Talking Heads: 77 a landmark album.
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01. Uh-Oh, Love Comes To Town [2:49]
02. New Feeling [3:09]
03. Tentative Decisions [3:08]
04. Happy Day [3:55]
05. Who Is It [1:44]
06. No Compassion [4:49]
07. The Book I Read [4:10]
08. Don't Worry About The Government [3:01]
09. First Week Last Week... Carefree [3:21]
10. Psycho Killer [4:20]
11. Pulled Up [4:30]
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