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By Brian Gearing
That the Talking Heads are one of American music's most influential bands is a fact deemed so sacred by now that any heretics holding contrary opinions would likely be drawn, quartered, and burned at the stake. The sanctity of the band's later work, however, is a little more open for debate. Though internal tensions pushed them closer to creative implosion, the band's last three albums still stand up against ninety percent of everything produced in the Twentieth Century and damn near a hundred percent of the garbage that passed for music during the eighties. The recent DualDisc reissues of the Talking Heads' canon have been exalted by both critics and laymen, and while Little Creatures (1985), True Stories (1986), and Naked (1988) may not have received the hero's welcome of their predecessors, they've still managed to weather the sands of time pretty well.
Jerry Harrison and the rest of the Heads dust off the master tapes and polish them to a Surround Sound sheen, and while all three come out shiny and new, the simpler pop of Little Creatures and True Stories gives Harrison a little less to work with. Of the two, Creatures fairs better: each instrumental layer occupies a different space of the room, and every time you turn your head, a new dynamic peaks out of the sonic undergrowth.
The weakest of the three (David Byrne didn't want to release the album of Talking Heads recordings of songs written for others to sing), True Stories was the beginning of the end. It's unfortunate that the bonus tracks didn't make the 21st Century cut, because Pops Staples' "Papa Legba" and Tito Larriya's "Radio Head" both surpass Byrne's flat vocal performances on the album proper. That said, the zydeco shuffle of "Radio Head" and familiar Heads groove on "Wild Wild Life" are two of the band's latter-day highlights, and "City of Dreams" still stands out as one of the prettiest songs the Talking Heads ever wrote.
Little Creatures sounds more like our Talking Heads than any of these three, despite its simpler song structures and more grown-up lyrics (in sentiment anyway — Byrne's verbal efficiency is in high gear on this record). The two singles, "And She Was" and "Road to Nowhere," sandwich an album of tight pop tunes that still ooze the band's familiar quirkiness, and the video extras remind you why you ever wanted your MTV in the first place. The other single, "Stay Up Late," may very well be the Heads' catchiest, and Byrne's analysis of the human condition on "Creatures of Love" boils us all down to our simplest drives while questioning just what might be wrong with himself.
Unlike the big hits from Little Creatures, Naked's two singles, "Blind" and "(Nothing But) Flowers," couldn't sell enough to keep the four bandmates even financially interested, but the Talking Heads' final album gains the most from the Surround Sound makeover. After two albums of tight, concise songs, Naked was constructed in much the same way as Remain in Light, with session musicians from South America and Africa layering busy percussion over the band's raw, improvised grooves. What filters out through modern DVD technology is a room full of sonic shadows and light. Unlike on RIL, the Heads keep their post-punk experiments to themselves and let the polyrhythmic grooves speak in their own native tongues. Openers "Blind" and "Mr. Jones" land in the Sahel of West Africa, and "Totally Nude" juxtaposes pedal steel with Makossa while Byrne's nerdy soul dances over the rhythms. The American melodies of "(Nothing But) Flowers" mix with more exotic beats before darkness falls on the plain for the rest of the album, but daytime sounds still fill the night that descends on the room.
More than even the music perhaps, the inserts' band photos tell the tale of the Talking Heads' last days: Little Creatures is four misfits strange and young enough to deck themselves in circus fabrics and goofy hats but normal and adult enough to feel a little uncomfortable about it. The silhouetted figures of True Stories could well be dancing, but the expressions that color the shadowed faces are unknown. On Naked, four adults, dressed in pressed suits and expensive shoes, are ready to move on but attached and professional enough to give it one last try. The liner notes of True Stories quote Spin's Chris Carroll: "This album is about growing older and coming to terms with the things that made you angry just a few years ago" (1986), and if that's true, then the initial denial and eventual acceptance must be the easy part. The difficult part for the Talking Heads wasn't the end, but getting to it.
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