Speaking In Tongues

There is a party scene in Lars and the Real Girl in which someone puts on a song for dancing. It is This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) by the Talking Heads. I don't think people in the upper midwest in this day and age would play that song at a party, but it did make me think of the album on which it appears, Speaking in Tongues, which is one of my favorite albums of all time.

Talking Heads are kind of a touchstone for me. They are the first band I got into that was beyond the classic rock hold-overs of the sixties. They are the first band I ever saw in concert, my freshman year of college, 1979. I have all eight of their studio albums, and they've recorded some of the enduring songs of my memory.

For their first three albums, Talking Heads were something of a new wave band, somewhat experimental but still in the CBGBs/art-rock world. For their fourth album, Remain in Light, they showed a heavy influence from Afro-Caribbean music, and broke through to the mainstream through the new MTV with a video for Once in a Lifetime. They sort of synthesized everything on their next album, released in 1983, which was Speaking in Tongues. I think it is their greatest achievement, in which they peaked before a gentle slide into pop-heavy music and eventual irrelevance.

The first track, Burning Down the House, was their first top-ten hit and is marvelously catchy while also being sinister. Most of the tracks on this album have a somewhat sinister overtone, or at least cynicism. Consider Girlfriend is Better (which contains the refrain "Stop making sense" which was used as a title for their terrific concert film, directed by Jonathan Demme), which has the snarky line: "I got a girlfriend with bows in her hair, and nothing is better than that."

Just looking down the song list makes me happy. I usually think a record is worthwhile if it has two or three good songs on it, but this one is nine for nine. Slippery People, Making Flippy Floppy, I Get Wild/Wild Gravity, and the vaguely exotic Swamp, which can make you feel cool just by listening to it.

But for all the good songs that come before it, the closing number, which the Lutherans of Lars and the Real Girl grooved to, is by far the best. This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) is a song for all-time, a paean to that which makes a person feel loved. It seems to be ostensibly about home, or a loved one that represents home (David Byrne's lyrics have never been transparent), and it creates such a wistful state of mind that listening to it can chase almost any blues. These may be Byrne's most sentimental lyrics: "Home is where I want to be/but I guess I'm already there/I come home, she lifted up her wings/I guess this must be the place." And then there's a bit that I always like to think of when my bank account is low: "Never for money, always for love/cover up and say goodnight."

The album that followed, Little Creatures, was also terrific and won some polls as best album of 1985, but is a little more self-conscious. To me, the essential Talking Heads album is Speaking in Tongues.