Everybody is getting involved but few should be. The collection of various artists featured on this tribute to Stop Making Sense is a pull of those who dared to raise their hand when asked to make one of the many A24 cash-grab appearances of new material for the re-release of the Talking Heads concert classic. The four-piece are on miraculous speaking terms and must be milked of quips and quotes from a reflective perspective now an anniversary event is possible. Everyone’s Getting Involved is the sort of Now That’s What I Call Music collection made to refit classic tracks into new ears. But there was nothing wrong with Stop Making Sense and few covers of their work last as interesting adaptations of bonafide classics. Black Midi and Wet Leg may have offered acceptable renditions but miss out on this album, which feels more like a collection of those begrudgingly accepting the offer than anyone truly moved by the music.
Example after example flows through a period of grating listens with Miley Cyrus opener Psycho Killer and the so bad it’ll make you want to rip your skin off reworking of Once in a Lifetime from Kevin Abstract. These are samples where it is clear the songs mean little to the artist at hand. Literal meaning has been taken, adapting not their style to the fundamentals of the message but a straight retake which will make you appreciate, more than anything, the subtleties the original group has. It means Psycho Killer has the beauty of its growing intensity cast aside for a sudden and uneventfully heavy collection of pop-like instrumentals better suited to current-day Lady Gaga. Trying to make the title a literal identifier of the tempo, rather than an observation of the world, is an infuriatingly common trouble for this album. Paramore does the same for Burning Down the House but at least their origins linger in the shadow of Talking Heads. Stop Making Sense has lasted this long because of its continued accuracy and wonder in modern culture.
Messy at the best of times, with a few pieces worth airlifting from the wreckage. Lorde’s only original work in some years and a cover of Heaven from The National drift between vaguely enjoyable and questionably placed. Where it may follow the same outline as the original album the whiplash of tone is barbaric and enlisting the dull likes of The National, who couldn’t even manage an interesting slice of contemporary music for themselves last year, is one in several uninspired events. Promising artists like Blondshell and The Linda Lindas get away with vaguely solid covers because of the shelter they take behind other, worse works later. The overarching trouble for Everyone’s Getting Involved is the strong urge to listen to Stop Making Sense rather than a collection of half-baked covers which prod at the dark whimsy Byrne brought to these songs.
Instrumentally unchanged for the most part, and for those who dare to turn the dial they find themselves sinking into a placid sound. A lack of warmth and liveliness is not just due to the transfer of live energy to a modern studio. It is far deeper than that. Artists who have heard the originals immediately assumed their style and idea would sound better. Wrong on every account. DJ Tunez has a passive but neatly changed Life During Wartime which becomes more an instrumental stretch than a lyrical powerhouse. Those are the only changes to be made to these tracks and, for most of them, they do not work. Instead, they are dull and languishing, obsessed with shifting the tide with a weaker instrumental, and a poorer grasp of the lyrical and vocal presence. Strings and whirring electrics are no suitable replacement for depth, which Everyone’s Getting Involved lacks.
