Talking Heads

David Byrne viewed the benign R&B shout-out "Burning Down the House" through his paranoid art school lens and helped the Talking Heads garner the biggest hit of their career. Other key tracks include the uneasy white boy funk of "Girlfriend Is Better," the sinister "Swamp" (written for a Scorsese flick), and the chill-inducing marvel "This Must Be the Place," an honest and beautiful love song.

With Eno departed, the polyrhythms no longer seem so portentous--this funk is quirkily comfortable, like the Byrne-produced B-52's or the three-piece of Byrne's earlier primitivist period. Unfortunately, the polyrhythms no longer seem so meaningful, either. Though God knows there's no rock and roll rule that says playfulness can't signify all by itself, the disjoint opacity of the lyrics fails to conceal Byrne's confusion about what it all means. Yet side two lights me up nevertheless, sandwiching the purest anticapitalist song he's ever written and the purest prolove song he's ever written around two pieces of typically ironic-optimistic futurism. (Grade - A-)