Talking Heads – Fear of Music Review

Listeners are only right to fear Talking Heads. They may panic at their musical output but those of us at home, silently nodding away to the likes of Fear of Music, must realise this is the third album in three years for David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison. Terrifying. But they come good once more – the essential pieces of what would later become Stop Making Sense can be found here. I Zimbra may have been cut from the live recording, but it lingers as one of their best. Dadaist in practice and thought, Byrne cultivates a need for nonsense and envelops himself in it. It is then up to the rest of Talking Heads, the keyboards from Harrison and the drumming from Frantz, Hassam Ramzy and Abdou M’Boup, to bring rich texture from this rejection of sense. 

Change is self-made. Mind makes this clear. Science, religion and culture are the advantages of making room for it in a healthy life navigated by keeping your brain open to experience. Those tones, the stiff bass work from Weymouth and the whirring sci-fi additions in the background are brought to life well. What changes our minds? Music and talent may influence us but it is reaction which gets us there. Is the degree of separation what Byrne hopes to convince of? Or is it more of his Dadaist revolt which hits its peak here? Either way, there is an expectation of navigation previously found on ‘77, this need to connect with the world and take hold, for nobody else will. Cities claims to have it all worked out but the agitated energy, the stitches of new wave guitar work crushed under the disco-ready feel from the piano work and its repetition, blurs those confident emotions of having the world figured out.  

Having the Stop Making Sense editions of Life During Wartime can make a return to Fear of Music tricky. We now know what power these songs possess, unlocked on the live stage and re-evaluated with their slick synth instrumentals. Corrugated, metallic covers, dystopian tragedies and this relative feel of fading out into nothing all come through Life During Wartime and bleed into Memories Can’t Wait. Fitting, essential and gloriously underrated piece of clanging punk roots. Keep the party in your mind burning. Fear of Music clarifies the independence heard on ‘77, this distant clang of industrial rock underlines the need to take hold of your life and to rush through the opportunities it may present. What good is influence if it is not utilised?  

Even with this fixation on gripping the chances which flash by there is no guarantee of success, as Air finds out. A choked-up Byrne relaying what we take for granted as Harrison booms through with some beautiful guitar work, the backing vocals rising like spectres in the smoke-filled skies, is a challenging, essential accompaniment. Keep on rising to Heaven, another track which benefits from its acoustic turn on Stop Making Sense. We are all animals at the end of the day, defecating on the floor as we scratch our heads and figure out where we go from here. Talking Heads has proven time and time again their longevity comes from disrupting the gloss of the world. We hope to know how to deal with the real world, but Fear of Music applies intensity in the right places and has us second-guessing the sure-fire path we had through life.