Return the favour, Mr. Byrne. Paramore marked a turn of surprise financial excess for A24 with their cover of Burning Down the House ahead of a re-release of the much-loved and rightly adored Stop Making Sense. All of this is brought to listeners by the vacant faces cashing in on the love of good music. But Paramore, and now David Byrne, are no strangers to the financial implications and manage to overcome those burdens for the sake of quality, intense art. Hard Times, the hit After Laughter single which was piped through broken speakers in Sunderland clubs for years on end is now a creative vehicle for Talking Heads frontman Byrne, who adds his feverish and phantom-like vocals to an inevitably samba-fused beat.
How do we make heads or tails of what is, in effect, a polite return of tribute cover work? Byrne is not to be rattled out to cover all the works of those who covered his and Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense effort but this Hard Times link-up for Record Store Day feels fun, if not a bit unnecessary. At least Byrne has added the funk fever his solo career was best known for to a Paramore single not quite screaming for adaptation but certainly benefits from it. Hard Times ends with the same suddenness which sparks its existence. Byrne leaps into it and scuttles off without a moment to spare, an in-and-out studio production which feels fittingly cobbled together. An out of the blue nod to a band which has hit a creative vein of interest and is pursuing it as long as they can. As is their right – and hopefully it lasts a little longer, past the tribute covers and Stop Making Sense ties.
For here is a chance with Byrne to take on bigger and better ideas. His days of American Utopia is at an end and the album served its almost too-lengthy purpose. Perhaps he must now step back and infuse samba influences into the alternative electronics of the last eight years. Hard Times certainly fits this jacked-up version of brass and lighter, higher pitches, much as Burning Down the House was profiled as what Haley Williams would sound like if Talking Heads had been under her guidance. Much the same and with little instrumental difference on her version, Byrne whittles away a new sound for Hard Times, a punk-lacking shift and instead a turn to those old reliable beats and rhythms he became obsessed with in the mid-1980s.
Some habits die hard and others linger on, infecting everything they touch. Hard Times is a solid go from Byrne who makes for an affable host here. Light and enjoyable stuff from a legendary performer tipping his thanks to a band who managed not to desecrate one of his best-known songs. It all plays off well enough and though this cover of Hard Times is not a scratch on the catchy, memorable original, it offers a bit of new light and movement on a song which has captured plenty of listens. It works, is the best Byrne can hope for. He has become the oddity which crops up from time to time with wistful memories of the world around us, hoping to revel in optimism while the cities crumble. He lost his edge when he turned away from the dystopian tinges of Talking Heads and replaced it with this feverish desire to dance the days away. Long may it reign and Hard Times marks yet another example of the post-group days of Byrne.
