Talking Heads More Songs About Buildings & Food CD

Also available with TALKING HEADS '77 on 1 cassette.
Talking Heads: David Byrne (vocals, guitar, percussion); Jerry Harrison (guitar, keyboards, background vocals); Tina Weymouth (bass, background vocals); Chris Frantz (drums, percussion).
Additional personnel: Brian Eno (various instruments, background vocals).
Recorded at Compass Point Studio, New Providence, The Bahamas in March and April 1978.
Talking Heads: Jerry Harrison (vocals, guitar, keyboards, synthesizer); David Byrne (vocals, guitar, keyboards, bass instrument, percussion); Tina Weymouth (guitar, keyboards, synthesizer, bass instrument, percussion, background vocals); Chris Frantz (keyboards, drums, percussion).
The title of Talking Heads' second album, More Songs About Buildings and Food, slyly addressed the sophomore record syndrome, in which songs not used on a first LP are mixed with hastily written new material. If the band's sound seems more conventional, the reason simply may be that one had encountered the odd song structures, staccato rhythms, strained vocals, and impressionistic lyrics once before. Another was that new co-producer Brian Eno brought a musical unity that tied the album together, especially in terms of the rhythm section, the sequencing, the pacing, and the mixing. Where Talking Heads had largely been about David Byrne's voice and words, Eno moved the emphasis to the bass-and-drums team of Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz; all the songs were danceable, and there were only short breaks between them. Byrne held his own, however, and he continued to explore the eccentric, if not demented persona first heard on 77, whether he was adding to his observations on boys and girls or turning his "Psycho Killer" into an artist in "Artists Only." Through the first nine tracks, More Songs was the successor to 77, which would not have earned it landmark status or made it the commercial breakthrough it became. It was the last two songs that pushed the album over those hurdles. First there was an inspired cover of Al Green's "Take Me to the River"; released as a single, it made the Top 40 and pushed the album to gold-record status. Second was the album closer, "The Big Country," Byrne's country-tinged reflection on flying over middle America; it crystallized his artist-vs.-ordinary people perspective in unusually direct and dismissive terms, turning the old Chuck Berry patriotic travelogue theme of rock & roll on its head and employing a great hook in the process. ~ William Ruhlmann
The Heads' second album found them building on the twitchy "new wave" sound they established with their debut while using that approach as a springboard for new lyrical and musical innovations. The band's sonic pallette is a bit wider here; the interplay between the guitars of David Byrne and Jerry Harrison is more fully developed here, are Harrison's keyboard contributions (he was, after all, strictly a keys man in the Modern Lovers, one of the Heads' primary influences). The band displays diversity with their first recorded cover tune, Al Green's "Take Me To The River," which they redefine with an ominous, supple sensuality. While Byrne still sounds like his nerves are being stretched to the breaking point, the band is a little looser here, as on the jumpy, Velvet Underground-ish "Thank You For Sending Me an Angel." Byrne's hyper-intellectualism is in full flower on BUILDINGS, from the gender politics lesson "The Girls Want to Be With the Girls" to the New York bohemian slant of "Artists Only," whose key phrase is "you can't see it till it's finished!"

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