Talking Heads

Time stands still when you're cracking up. At the brink of mental overload, there's a
revelatory instant -- a freeze frame in which everything fits together in new ways. Logic
dissolves, paralogic reigns. And in that precarious moment, the world is fixed in place,
skewed and renewed. David Byrne's lyrics on Talking Heads' Fear of Music are paralogical
visions stated with almost childlike directness: he thinks that air hits him in the fa... More >

David Byrne's celebration of paranoia is a little obsessive, but like they say, that doesn't mean somebody isn't trying to get him. I just wish material as relatively expansive as "Found a Job" or "The Big Country" were available to open up the context a little; that way, a plausible prophecy like "Life During Wartime" might come off as cautionary realism instead of ending up in the nutball corner with self-referential fantasies like "Paper" and "Memories Can't Wait." And although I'm impressed with the gritty weirdness of the music, it is narrow--a little sweetening might help. (Grade: A-)