Talking Heads – ‘Talking Heads ’77’
As punk began to bloom in New York’s underground scene during the mid-1970s, recent art graduates David Byrne and Chris Frantz, who’d previously played together as The Artistics, decided to form a new band. After recruiting Frantz’s girlfriend, Tina Weymouth, to play bass, the seeds of Talking Heads were firmly planted.
The band spent two years playing gigs around New York, becoming regulars in venues like CBGBs, before Jerry Harrison was employed to play keys and guitar. Now, Talking Heads’ final lineup was complete, and they were ready to release their debut album, Talking Heads ’77.
Released before punk had even exploded in the United Kingdom, the album couldn’t be clearly defined by one genre. While it showed traces of punk influence from their contemporaries, Talking Heads ’77 expressed a lack of regard for convention, with the band pulling inspiration from a wide range of styles, such as funk, disco and rhythm and blues. The result is an artier take on punk that transcended the boundaries of the genre, a progenitive example of post-punk and new wave sounds.
The record possesses unique instrumentation, and astute lyricism courtesy of Byrne. His words bind the songs together, displaying a contrasting mixture of uncertainty about humanity and a joyous refusal to let these worries overwhelm him to the point of despair. Byrne often imbues the album’s darkest moments, like ‘Psycho Killer’ and ‘No Compassion’, with an underlying sense of humour and satire, while romance is a path tread cautiously, almost parodically. Thus, Talking Heads ’77 depicts the many complexities that define the human experience, with Byrne communicating the complicated emotions that can arise within modern society.
The opening track ‘Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town’ immediately demonstrates Byrne’s suspicions about love. Byrne asks, “Where, where, is my common sense?” highlighting the distracting lure love, its ability to make us slack at work or even illicit feelings of craziness and naïviety. Byrne seems to toe the line between giving in to these feelings and recognising their potentially destructive impact. The steady rhythm, led by Weymouth’s bass, even features a steel drum solo, introducing the listener to the band’s macrocosmic influences.
A tense guitar riff runs through the following track, ‘New Feeling’, in which Byrne reflects on hanging out with friends, expressing a sense of hesitancy as he wishes to “meet them all over again.” Byrne allows his voice to contort with a sense of urgency, sometimes leaning into an almost animalistic tone to convey his feelings.
Interestingly, and surely not coincidentally, the next song, ‘Tentative Decisions’, begins with the words “Now that I can release my tensions,” with the band taking a decisively sparser approach. Frantz’s drums sound militaristic as they simmer under Byrne’s exploration of the differences between men and women. However, as the song nears its end, the band give way to a danceable instrumental section, encouraging the listener to let go of their confusion and anxieties with them.
As the album continues, Byrne moves between optimism and annoyance, with the simple ‘Happy Days’ depicting the singer at his most cheerful. Yet, on ‘No Compassion’, he takes a stand against people who get a kick out of talking about their feelings, singing cutting lines such as “Go talk to your analyst, isn’t that what they’re paid for?” As the song gets to the three-minute mark, the band fade out before returning with distorted guitars, which pick up into a small scuzzy outburst before coming back down to earth for Byrne’s final lyrical musings.
One of the album’s most underrated slices of genius is ‘Don’t Worry About the Government’, which sees Byrne explore the contrast between nature and industrialisation, pointing out how the over-convenience that humans have crafted for themselves will only lead to destruction. Byrne takes a robotic tone as he sings, “I will relax with my loved ones,” before satirically adding, “Don’t you worry ’bout me.”
Alas, these are all elevated by the band’s ability to craft a single. ‘Psycho Killer’ is emblematic of this. For all the album’s artistic subtlety and style-bending, the true triumph is that it still the noose to be a hit. Everything is done with inherent catchiness and hooks are the true key on display.
Talking Heads ’77 is a great album, hinting at future capacities more so than solidifying perfection at present. Still, the record demonstrates where the band would soon head with more confidence and expansion, highlighting an early penchant for musical rebellion. With songs such as ‘Who Is It?’, ‘Pulled Up’ and ‘First Week/Last Week’ giving the album some of its most sonically upbeat and danceable moments, there’s a lot to love about Talking Heads ’77, which cemented the band as true visionaries.
