There is something to be said about discovering a band at the end of their career. Growing up in the \u201880s, I was familiar with the Talking Heads by way of MTV, but I didn\u2019t own any of their albums. It was only in the \u201890s when I picked up a roommate\u2019s copy of Naked<\/i> that I was truly drawn to the band. <\/p>\n
If I had discovered Naked<\/i> after I tracked down Remain In Light<\/i>, Fear Of Music<\/i> and Stop Making Sense<\/i>, I most likely would have fallen victim to the lazy pattern of too many music critics, which is to heap heavy praise on a band\u2019s first few albums and then eventually cool to their later output. It\u2019s an easy pattern to fall into, since an overwhelming majority of bands release their best material in the early stages of their career. <\/p>\n
Unfortunately, if you fall too much into this pattern of assuming a band\u2019s output grows more inferior as more albums are released, you tend to judge albums based on the group\u2019s career path and not on the disc\u2019s own merits. This makes me wonder if 20 years down the road, critics may eventually rediscover one of Ryan Adams or Prince\u2019s tossed-off efforts as a \u201clost masterpiece.\u201d <\/p>\n
Anyway, back to Naked<\/i>. It certainly doesn\u2019t have the manic energy of the Talking Heads\u2019 earlier releases. Instead of four musicians in a studio, the band recruited jazz, Algerian and Moroccan musicians, not to mention former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr. The band also migrated to David Byrne\u2019s voice is tremendously smoother and more controlled than on almost any other album from the Talking Heads. Drummer Chris Frantz and keyboardist Jerry Harrison are also more relaxed here as well. However, a relaxed sound doesn\u2019t mean the songs are by any means lazy. The organic sound is matched by lyrics that incorporate some form of earthy elements. In the hilarious \u201cNothing But Flowers,\u201d Byrne envisions a suburban box mall being overrun by daisies: \u201cIf this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower,\u201d he sings in probably the most famous line in the album. <\/p>\n If Talking Heads 77<\/i> was the sound of a band heavily rooted in the