David Byrne is living proof that you can be on the autism spectrum, suck at singing, and still be a star.
With Our Love sounds a lot like the songs off of Speaking In Tongues, specifically Girlfriend Is Better and Pull up the Roots.
Found a Job is the album's stand out. Judy's in the basement // Inventing situations. Who can relate? Probably a top-five Weymouth bass-line, Byrne's singing is good here (I'll get into this), overall catchy song.
I think this was an album for its time, and you need context to understand why it's considered important. This is me gently saying that this album mostly sucks. In 1978, David Byrne freakish delivery was considered interesting/quirky/transgressive/iconoclastic/insert $5 word here; now it just sounds bad. Warning Sign in particular is a real stinker.
That's the problem with gimmicks. A big part of what made Talking Heads stand out was because of Byrne's singing; not because it was good, but because it was different. Now that forty + years have passed, the songs that we all remember, the songs that still get played today, are ironically the one's where Byrne does make an earnest attempt at singing - This Must Be The Place, Road To Nowhere, etc.
Take Me to the River is fire, but you already knew that going into the album.
I love at the end they go fuck it, country song.
It's 1965. You just got back from the Human Potential Movement seminar, where ideas such as 'you're only using about 10% of your brain" or "Every child born has, at the moment of birth, a greater potential intelligence than Leonardo da Vinci ever used" were preached as gospel.
You're about to smoke some absolute reggie; your friend comes over with the new Bob Dylan record, which you think is about to be 'totally copacetic.' The first song plays, Subterranean Homesick Blues. Bob opens up with
Johnny's in the basement, mixin' up the medicine
I'm on the pavement, thinkin' about the government
This is the most profound thing you've ever heard. Two decades later you will go on to vote for Ronald Reagan twice and believe a muslim caravan is heading straight towards your doorstep.
I am a Dylan realist - great artist .The countercultural movement of the 1960s was bankrupt; some good things (Vietnam, Civil rights) but mostly decadence (that's all Free Love was, really), ultimately becoming the vanguard for the culture of narcissism that we were born into, or what our parents were born into. (Shout out to the Lasch readers in the group)
One thing I really appreciate about this album is Dylan's singing. In the late 1960s it starts to get really nasily, you can hear the change on Nashville Skyline. Yes I know there's exceptions, Simple Twist of Fate, The Man In Me - whatever I think the early deliveries were overall better, more raw.
Mr Tambourine Man, It's Alright Ma(I'm Only Bleeding), and It's All over Now, Baby Blue are the hits.
One last thing on the mythization of Dylan: here's a good review I read on Meet Me in the Bathroom, a book about the indie-rock bands of the early 90s/aughts
But while reading Meet Me In The Bathroom is a pleasant enough experience it is also a stone-cold bummer because: damn, man, I don't want my generation to descend up its own butthole the same way that the Boomers did.
Look: I was in college when a lot of these bands released their first records. I remember the Strokes being played at house parties. I fell in love with Interpol during 2005, which was the first year that I was living completely on my own, two and a half thousand miles from where I grew up. Hell, the National - who are interviewed in the book but not really discussed - have been my favorite band for going on a decade.
But it's a big leap to go from "I like these bands" to "these bands were important. They Meant Something."
Did these bands change things? Sure, why not. But you know who else changed things? Reality TV and Starbucks and PornHub and SpongeBob Squarepants. I'm told that a butterfly can change the world if it flaps its wings hard enough.
and it's allllll over noooooooooow, buuhhhhhhyyyy bluuuuuuu
