MY MOST LOVED ALBUMS - More Songs About Buildings And Food by Talking Heads - 1978

And so we come to the concluding album of this current seasons My Most Loved Albums, and we near the end of the 1970's, certainly a seminal era in my musical explorations. Every subsequent musical enthusiasm I have ever had, you will find has its roots in this decade.

Talking Heads are another interesting example of the idiosyncratic US punk band who smoothly morph into post-punk. After the edgy angular psychopathy of their self titled debut, Talking Heads brought in Brian Eno to produce the ''difficult' second album. Second albums become troublesome, because the freshness of their debut is now gone. All their best early songs, which they've performed endlessly and finely honed through live performance are now mostly used up. The compressed time to write fresh material, plus the added pressure to produce another winner, often means a band plays safe and reproduces more of the same. And on many levels this invariably disappoints. Bringing in Brian Eno was an astute move. if anyone was likely to encourage a band to shake itself up, to playfully stretch and subvert its existing paradigms, it would be him. It both was and wasn't going to be, just more songs about buildings and food, as the album title announces with its tongue firmly in its ironic cheek 

More Songs About Buildings And Food, is the album where Talking Heads began to move away from being a punk band who cut their teeth in the New York underground scene, and venture into more experimentally artful territory. Playing with mashing up their frenetic choppy guitar style with funk stylings, and open up further that more plaintive reflective tone to David Byrne's lyricism. Byrne's song writing style tends to start with the recognisably everyday and work outwards towards the universal. No album begins with so much committed attack, than this stirring opening track, a mass assault of guitar rhythm launches Thank You For Sending Me An Angel, which comes charging towards you like this galloping brigade of pounding horses. Into which Byrne enters whelping like a cowboy high on speed.

Eno's role on this album appears to have been to direct already existing temperaments, and where needs be to sprinkle a bit of standard Eno magic over a track. The latter arrives in its most recognisable form on Found A Job, probably my favourite track off the whole album. It starts as a simple hearted typical David Byrne song about a couple in the middle of a domestic argument, both searching for a vocation in life. The song motors along, and then two thirds of the way through Byrne shouts 'hit it', which kicks off an infectiously off beat stepping counterpoint rhythm that instantly elevates this into a wholly new musical level of joyful brilliance. It takes Talking Heads rhythmic drive, and forces it to take a sideways step out into unknown peripheral vision territory. Its utterly fabulous.

The album concludes with The Big Country. Byrne is in an airplane looking down on the quintessentially American landscapes of urban and rural life. He observes other people living simple conventional lifestyles, but finds he wants none of it - 'I wouldn't live there if you paid me, no siree' But nonetheless he still wants to live and belong somewhere, just not there. Encapsulating the ennui of Byrne's tired alienated persona, whilst also being a curious elegy to the very thing he most reviles. Its an emotionally conflicted, yet reflective song. Where we want, but don't want, what modern society has to offer us. The universality of Talking Heads songs are founded on quite plain and simple human yearnings for love and belonging. I've felt many of their songs spoke directly to my own past aspirations and struggles, which imbues them still with an enduring fondness, etched as they are with personal meaning.

So, that concludes this first series of My Most Loved Albums. In the end ten became twelve, and ended up at sixteen albums. These are in no way definitive, but they represent this moment in time and are a reflection of my enduring tastes, both then and now. At some point I may do one on the 1980's, but I need a break from a commitment to completing lists for a while. So when the spirit moves me, then maybe you'll hear some more.