Late last year, Talking Heads’ label released an expanded edition of the new wave quartet’s groundbreaking debut album, Talking Heads:77. Now, only a little more than half a year later, we have a similarly enlarged version of their 1978 sophomore release, the flippantly titled More Songs About Buildings and Food.
Recorded in the then-new seaside Bahamas studio of Island Records owner Chris Blackwell, this second album isn’t a radical departure from the first. Most of the songs for both LPs were written around the same time (some date from 1975), and, says the group’s Tina Weymouth, it worked out well “to not veer away into the unknown on our second album just as we were winning over listeners who had liked what we were doing on the first.”
Comparing this danceable, frequently funky sophomore record with the debut, however, you will notice differences, starting with the production. On More Songs About Buildings and Food, production is jointly credited to the band and Britain’s Brian Eno, the former Roxy Music member who has issued groundbreaking solo albums and collaborated with David Bowie, U2 and many other artists. Eno adds reverb, echoes and other electronic touches and gives Talking Heads a more richly textured and polished sound without sacrificing the intensity and frenetic pace that characterized the first CD. Moreover, the husband-and-wife team of drummer Chris Frantz and bassist Weymouth plays a bigger role here than on the debut LP, as does keyboardist and former Modern Lover Jerry Harrison.
On More Songs…, vocalist David Byrne arguably comes across a bit less like a “Psycho Killer” (the title of a standout track on Talking Heads:77), but his vocals still incorporate his trademark yelps and odd phrasing, and he still sounds unlike anyone else in rock.
Related: Our Album Rewind of the band’s next album, Fear of Music
Speaking of Byrne, who also plays guitar and adds synthesized percussion, he wrote, or in three cases co-wrote, all but one of the tunes on this album, and their lyrics are as quirky as those on the debut. They’re also frequently abstruse. “It happened before, it will happen again,” he sings in “Warning Sign,” adding, “Hear my voice, move my hair, I move it around a lot, but I don’t care what I remember.” In “The Girls Want to Be with the Girls,” he reports, “Girls are getting into abstract analysis, would like to make that intuitive leap/They’re making plans that have far-reaching effects.”
Less cryptic but no less idiosyncratic are the smile-inducing “Found a Job” and the excellent, album-closing “The Big Country.” In the latter, Byrne sings about flying over the heartland of a country (America, one presumes) and seeing schools, houses, factories and farms. “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me,” he proclaims. In “Found a Job,” meanwhile, a couple complain that there’s nothing worth watching on TV and wind up creating their own show, which becomes a hit and even helps save their relationship. “If your work isn’t what you love, then something isn’t right,” advises Byrne in the last verse. “Just think of Bob and Judy, they’re happy as can be, inventing situations, putting them on TV.”
Also on the CD is the band’s flawless, simmering cover of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River,” which at Eno’s suggestion, Talking Heads performed at a slower pace than the original. The track yielded a hit single, which Byrne recalls as being “both pleasant and slightly annoying,” because he would have preferred getting “more attention on our own material.” That song’s success notwithstanding, of course, he needn’t have worried about garnering notice for the self-penned tracks. This album went gold, and several subsequent originals-filled LPs went platinum.
Like the expanded version of Talking Heads:77, the similarly configured new box adds a great deal to the original record. It includes three CDs, a Blu-ray and a copiously illustrated hardcover book that features reminiscences by all of the group’s members.
The first CD presents a remaster of the original 11-track album, while the second offers alternate versions of nine of its tracks, four of which are previously unreleased. Here, too, is an instrumental version of “Electricity,” a song that Talking Heads sometimes performed in concert. Disc three serves up an animated, heretofore unavailable 1978 show at New York City’s Entermedia Theatre that includes seven numbers from the debut and 10 from More Songs About Buildings and Food, plus readings of “Electricity” and “Love → Building on Fire,” the band’s first single.
Like the Blu-ray that comes with the expanded Talking Heads:77, the one here offers stereo and Dolby Atmos mixes of the original album as well as a terrific DTS-HD Master surround-sound version. But this Blu-ray also incorporates something that the earlier box did not: two concert films. One offers six songs from the Entermedia performance in New York. The other features a previously unseen 11-number 1978 gig from Berkeley, California. Its material comes mostly from More Songs, but tunes from the debut LP show up as well.
[The 3-CD/1-Blu-ray SDE features the remastered album—prominently including their slowed down cover of “Take Me To the River”—alongside 11 rarities, including four previously unreleased alternate versions of album tracks. It’s available in the U.S. here, in Canada here and in the U.K. here. A 4-LP vinyl version of the Super Deluxe Edition also features the remastered album, rarities, and the New York concert recordings. It’s available in the U.S. here, in Canada here and in the U.K. here. A 2-LP edition, featuring the remastered album and a selection of rarities, is available in the U.S. here, in Canada here and in the U.K. here.]
These films are welcome bonuses that give you a sense of what the band looked like on stage in 1978, though the video quality is what you’d expect from recordings that are nearly half a century old. Moreover, the camera work, particularly from the Berkeley show, is amateurish and a bit distracting. The stereo sound is fine, however, and as usual, the band is on fire.
Watch Talking Heads perform “Take Me to the River” at the Entermedia Theatre
A top editor at leading consumer and trade magazines for more than 40 years, Jeff has interviewed dozens of musical luminaries, including Bruce Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt, Roger McGuinn, John Sebastian, Wolfman Jack, Tommy James, Tom Waits, the Righteous Brothers, and the members of Steely Dan.
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