Remain In Light<\/i> was the first album Talking Heads used to usher in the \u201880s and coincidentally, the last album the band would record with Brian Eno. The album was the result of the band slowly incorporating more and more Afropop song structures in their previous two albums. And while it yielded no hits in its initial release (\u201cOnce In A Lifetime\u201d didn\u2019t become a hit until a few years later), the album managed to crack the Billboard Top 20. <\/p>\n
Remain In Light<\/i> is one of the oddest hit albums in contemporary rock. The most noticeable sounds here don\u2019t come from guitars, but from the keyboards of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, as well as Frantz\u2019s sharp percussion. The blips and bleeps coming from songs like \u201cBorn Under Punches\u201d and \u201cCrosseyed And Painless\u201d sound more like a Cold War-era warning broadcast than actual rock songs. <\/p>\n
The musical paranoia on this disc is only matched by David Byrne\u2019s nervy vocals. In \u201cCrosseyed And Painless,\u201d Byrne sounds like someone whose nerves have been shot and opened raw for exposure. \u201cLost my shape\u2026trying to act casual \/ Can\u2019t stop \u2013 I might end up in the hospital,\u201d Byrne speaks rather than sings in the opening. The song ends with Byrne muttering, \u201cFacts are simple and facts are straight \/ Facts are lazy and facts are late \/ Facts all come with points of view\u201d \u2013 it sounds like he could go on for hours on this tangent. <\/p>\n
If the first few songs on Remain In Light<\/i> are a bit alienating, \u201cThe Great Curve\u201d offers a few hints of poppish escapism. Jon Hassell\u2019s horn arrangements hit fast and perfectly as an almost gospel chorus of \u201cA world of light\u2026she\u2019s gonna open our eyes up\u201d swells. Coming right after \u201cThe Great Curve\u201d is \u201cOnce In A Lifetime.\u201d The iconic phrases in that song, released so early in the \u201880s, nailed the rise of the yuppies of that decade as well as their post-crash fall with lines like \u201cAnd you may ask yourself \/ Where is that large automobile \/ And you may tell yourself \/ This is not my beautiful house! \/ And you may tell yourself \/ This is not my beautiful wife!\u201d<\/p>\n
Most music critics feel that Remain in Light<\/i> is the Talking Heads\u2019 best album. Personally, I\u2019d give that award to Fear Of Music<\/i> for its slightly warmer (read: more human) batch of songs. But Remain In Light<\/i> is still a masterpiece that paved the way for Peter Gabriel\u2019s and Paul Simon\u2019s Afropop experimentation as well as newer bands like Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah and Vampire Weekend. It may not be the most accessible album from the band, but it certainly one worth the time and energy it takes to get to know. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7876],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-41501","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-talking-heads","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41501"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}