{"id":41525,"date":"2009-05-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/uh-oh\/"},"modified":"2009-05-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-26T00:00:00","slug":"uh-oh","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/uh-oh\/","title":{"rendered":"Uh-Oh"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Byrne\u2019s efforts outside Talking Heads were a largely experimental trip. His work with Brian Eno and his dance and film scores fell far outside the musical mainstream, often even farther than the way-out-there Heads traveled. Uh-Oh<\/i> is the first release that could really be called a conventional rock album as far as his solo work goes.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Uh-Oh<\/i> segues nicely from the closing days of Talking Heads, a sweet collection of beat-infused pop. Unlike a lot of his legacy work, which was dark, often disturbing and surreal, these songs almost fall into the realm of sunny bubblegum pop. Big beats carry Byrne\u2019s often goofy yet clever lyrics, and bright, upbeat melodies with a Third World flavor back his always energetic and eccentric delivery. The emphasis on Latin and African beats is a large part of what sets this above an average pop album.\u00a0 Some great horn work flavors several tracks; \u201cMambo Cowboy (Hey Look At Me Now)\u201d and \u201cMonkey Man\u201d both feature a fusion of mariachi, calypso and Motown. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

One of the side effects of TH\u2019s growth from quirky, avant garde art-pop to bubbly world-pop was accessibility to a broader audience. A more conventional sound (albeit still way out there \u2013 little the Heads did was ever conventional) brought in folks who were put off by their brilliantly oddball roots. There\u2019s a long road between \u201cWarning Sign\u201d and \u201cBurning Down the House,\u201d and a lot of folks didn\u2019t make the trip and were left by the road scratching their heads (no pun intended. Really.) Along with changes in overall musical style, Byrne\u2019s songwriting became more conventional, but in a good way. He went from brilliantly concocting mercurial stream of consciousness imagery to something more linguistic without losing any of his quirky charm.\u00a0 <\/o:p><\/p>\n

I was thinking of a quote from Michael Stipe of R.E.M. defending his song \u201cShiny Happy People\u201d and the validity of goofy pop songs in modern music: \u201cWe don’t all have to be bleeding on the page to be valid, there\u2019s still room for big dumb pop songs\u201d. Agreed, and several of these tracks definitely fall into the big dump pop songs variety; however, it\u2019s dumb as in dance in your underwear, not as in unintelligent. \u201cGirls On My Mind\u201d rides a bubbly reggae rhythm, and Byrne\u2019s dorky McLovin-esque rant on his obsession with the fairer sex is so\u00a0 full of geeky bravado, it feels completely honest. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

This disc will immediately make you think Talking Heads, but that’s not a bad thing; the group was creative and still going strong when Byrne left, and he had a few years doing non-pop work to store up a lot of creative energy. It\u2019s a very good album in its own right, and something Heads fans can latch on to with ease. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":29903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8403],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-41525","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-david-byrne","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41525","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\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41525"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41525"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}