Talking Heads: Little Creatures
By The Holland Times Friday 11 December 2009, 11:12
Surprise! Here’s something new from the Talking Heads, the avant-punk-world-pop-art band founded in 1974 by a quartet of neuraesthenic Rhode Island nerds who followed up their legendary debut as the opening act for the Ramones at New York City’s CBGB on June 8, 1975--just months after Blondie and the Patti Smith Group got started on the same stage--with hits like “Psycho Killer,” “Life During Wartime, “Once in a Lifetime,” and “Burning Down the House” (their only top-ten hit). New? Not quite, but then again, the music made by David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth, which joined high art with lo-fi, will never grow old. This disc’s bonus tracks, early versions of “Road to Nowhere” and “And She Was,” as well as an extended mix of “Television Man,” are the putative justification for reissuing a 25-year-old album, one of the band’s most radio-friendly offerings, with hooks and beats that in no way compromise its loftier aspiration. Alas, it was the beginning of the end of something big: this was their semi-penultimate album. After Speaking in Tongues and Naked, the band broke up. The fact that they went on to make music as individuals that was almost as good as the music they made with the band was considerable consolation. Sad to say, the bonus tracks on Little Creatures don’t offer much beyond the minor pleasures that the collector craves (for that, go for 2006’s Bonus Rarities and Outtakes). But that may only reflect how good the official versions are: rangy, minimalist snapshots of the cute, slightly dangerous outsiders who populate Byrne’s imagination. This anti-heroic music, both highly strung and stoically reserved, owes as much to Bo Diddley as to La Monte Young, having found a way to use formula as an artistic enabler for pop perfection. One quibble: the gorgeous cover, by Howard Finster—it was Rolling Stone’s album of the year--is almost impossible to enjoy in the visually downsized c.d. format. Vinyl reissue, anyone?
Available on EMI Records
