Despite I agree this album is some quality stuff and one of Eno's key works, why does it get hailed as top 10 or even top 3 of '80s records? It's so new-wave/afrofunk it hurts to listen to it now. I get it, it contains a great deal of things which were innovative for pop music, but it sounds really old today. Like listening to new age/'90s dance music like some Deep Forest record.
Is it because it defined dance music for years to come? I honestly prefer My Life in the Bush of Ghosts to it.
I love both, but RiL remains my favorite album of the 80s
>>64645193
#1 favorite or just one of the favorites? I mean, there was a ton of other amazing albums in the '80s
THERE'S WATER
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN.
>>64645193
Of course one of the favorites
>>64645164
Yeah I agree, really cool sound but it gets tiresome once you're halfway through.
>>64645326
But the second half is the best part of the album
>>64645356
I know, that's why I wish I didn't get drained once I reached it.
I think that this is one of those albums that became everyone's favorite when they first started browsing /mu/, but nobody actually listens to after using the board for 6 months
>>64645301
Ah OK. Same here—I like it and it's undeniably very innovative. I just don't know why some people put it at #1 before absolutely everything. As if nothing better happened in the whole decade.
>so new-wave/afrofunk it hurts
you say this like it's a bad thing
there is nothing wrong with sounding dated
>>64645326
Yeah, that's my biggest gripe with it: although the tunes like Once In A Lifetime are listenable, the rest feels more like some sort of thesis in pop music, and is very unaccessible. I get it that it's not the point of the album—but for once, I'd like some melody and basic songwriting with my polyrhythms,
>>64645474
Yeah as production standards go it's great but the band themselves could've had more to go on.
>>64645441
>>64645453
I agree there are different kinds of "dated". But this record has that new wave yelping and funk which sound really archaic today, plus as I said it reminds me heavily of '90s new age/dance music. It sounds as irrelevant now as record scratching sounds which were everywhere in the '90s
>>64645553
Any other good Talking Heads albums? I tried More Songs About Buildings and Food and Fear of Music, but the former sounded like very simplified Remain in Light and the latter was like Halloween version of the same.
And don't even get me started on Speaking in Tongues. I thought, how could a record with Burning Down the House on it possibly be bad? The second track proved it very much could.
>>64645391
Yep, it burns out way too fast. It's almost like an instruction manual for music—it's got lots of ideas but it's not very listenable at all.
>>64645696
Funny, because Burning Down the House is the worst song in the album
>>64645696
I know about Stop Making Sense but I haven't heard it so I can't really vouch.
>>64645391
this has been one of my favorite albums since before i first ventured over here in 09 and i'd still consider it one
>>64645747
It's the worst one if you're a snobbish music critic. If you actually like listening to songs, Burning Down The House is a great pop song which captures some of the best things about Talking Heads.
It's not very progressive—I agree on that. But for once Talking Heads took the best of both worlds and wrote music which was both listenable and innovative.
>>64645768
>>64645872
This Must Be the Place is more poppier and (you guessed it) better, Burning Down the House just goes nowhere.
>>64645933
It's another example of a Talking Heads with a looping melody. I see nothing interesting in it. It's not bad, it's just pretty boring.
>>64646080
*Talking Heads song
>>64645164
It has this really cool combo of post-punk/new wave/funk. Yes a lot of dance music has been influenced by this big time, but what its influences doesn't necessarily have that it does is a very interesting approach towards rhythm. It really took the African polyrhythms thing seriously, and as a result it's way of doing dance music is totally different to music that it inspired that kept itself in 4/4. The music that did try the odd time signature aspect of RIL (Radiohead's Idioteque for example) is not as dancey and funky as this album is. So RIL is that perfect combo of the two.
>>64646124
It is funky, but at the same time I have a hard time imagining a party where someone would play this album. It treats dance music with almost academic approach. There's something very cold, unapproachable about it.
By contrast, when I think of, say, Gang of Four's Entertainment! , or PIL's Second Edition, they are much more danceable. There's something human about them, they're experimental but they're not afraid to party. I think it's not in the least about energy: Talking Heads feels very machine-like, as if the whole band runs on batteries.
>>64646617
They play songs from RIL at my gym. Idk if I would call it academic or machine like. It may seem that way because of the atypical time sigs and polyrhythms, but I think that stuff makes it feel more human and alive.
The rhythm itself moving that way is unnatural to most dance music yes, but it is more natural to who were are as human beings, and I think whether people are fully aware of this or not, it ends up affecting them either way.
This may/may not have influenced someone like Autechre who also took a more cold and calculated approach towards making music but to ultimately make it feel alive.
>>64646810
>They play songs from RIL at my gym
They sure have some enlightened person in charge of music over there. If there's one place where I don't expect this kind of music to be playing, it's a gym. To each his own of course but still
>>64646617
This album doesn't sound that danceable to me, especially not Listening Wind and The Overload.
It's not all just a dance music album, even songs that would be more dancey like Born Under Punches, I really just dig the gritty bass line, and yeah it's great composition, but why is this a flaw?
Also, the lyrics for every song are fucking magnificent. Basically this album does everything right and almost nothing wrong.
>>64645696
Everything after Speaking In Tongues is really accessible.
>>64647288
Thanks for the tip. I assumed they stuck with their sound for life.
>>64647062
> Also, the lyrics for every song are fucking magnificent. Basically this album does everything right and almost nothing wrong.
It's true, but at the same time for me it deliberately eschews melody. It has catchy vocal hooks, but the music is mostly just one loop for song and so primitive (in the literal sense of this word) that it really sounds like afrofunk, like this for example https://youtu.be/1-Yb7NAEft8 , but without human element. Byrne sounds almost like a robot programmed to have one emotion, singing words like Text-to-Speech software. And the whole band just plays this loop like a sampler.
I don't mean it must be danceable—just at least listenable. Eno+U2 worked well to me on Unforgettable Fire, because the melody was more classic and Bono actually had lots of passion in his voice. If you listen to Wire, for example, at first it sounds almost like the Talking Heads, but the choruses, energetic drumming and effect jams "save" it from sounding like machine humming.
>>64645744
how so?
>>64648119
See >>64647604
There's no life to it, it sounds like a prototype, a bare framework with catchy hooks attached.
>>64647604
i disagree. idk i don't really know how to refute what you're saying in an objective sense but i just disagree
>>64647604
I agree, the only convincing melody on the whole album is the chorus of Once In A Lifetime. The rest is a composition of percussive phrases backed with some pretty sounds coming from the guitars and synthesizers, and some solid songwriting and singing from Byrne.
I think your comparison is unfair, though. All 8 of the songs on RiL are obviously much higher in quality than what you're comparing them to, flaws aside. You are pointing out some of the few composition's weakest points, and you're right about them, but it's always relative to what else is out there.
>>64648349
the chorus of once in a lifetime is the most accessible, poppy part of the album. it's one of the least interesting
>>64648349
>I think your comparison is unfair, though. All 8 of the songs on RiL are obviously much higher in quality than what you're comparing them to, flaws aside. You are pointing out some of the few composition's weakest points, and you're right about them, but it's always relative to what else is out there.
And I actually admit it 100%. This reminded me heavily of this quote:
> "We're in a funny position," David Byrne told Rolling Stone upon Fear of Music's release. "It wouldn't please us to make music that's impossible to listen to, but we don't want to compromise for the sake of popularity."
In terms of "quality", this album is excellent. There's no denying it. The way songs are constructed and executed flawlessly is very noticeable. It simply has no filler—every track here is like a gold bar.
And yet all its brilliance never makes me play this album, for the reasons I mentioned. Despite its near-flawlessness, I'd still rather listen to Eno-era U2. Are they not even close to it in experimentation, in pure architecture of music, in musical thinking? Yes, yes and yes. But something very necessary is missing from it, something which makes an academic experiment a song you want to sing along or bang your head to. It has as little feeling as the faces on the cover of this record.
There's too much repetition in Talking Heads. I love so many of their songs but they repeat so fucking much without variation.
