Pros: the quirkiness that Talking Heads are known for mixed with simple, catchy pop goodness
Cons: none to speak of
The Bottom Line: After hits like Psycho Killer, Burning Down the House, and Once in a Lifetime, Little Creatures was the perfect time for Talking Heads to embrace their warm, sunny side.
DrFaustus's Full Review: Little Creatures by Talking Heads
I was born too late to experience the evolution of some truly spectacular bands. To me, the Beatles who recorded the sweetly innocent pop of Please Please Me and The Beatles who played the experimental psychedelia of The White Album have always existed side by side. I got to know the raw, aggressive punk version of the Police and their Outlandos D'Amour at the same time that I discovered the lush, orchestral, new wave Police of Syncronicity, and I've never really had to think about the journey between the two. And Genesis? There's virtually no gap between the experimental art house prog rock of Selling England by the Pound and the adult contemporary pop of Invisible Touch.
In some ways, it's nice to be a latecomer to the party. There's a huge back catalog that I can dive into, immersing myself in the whole history of the band all at once. At the same time, though, I never got to experience the giddy excitement that comes with anticipation of each new album, starting weeks or even months before their release. The drama can sometimes be a bit much, with die-hard fans decrying every new direction that a band takes as betrayal of everything that the musicians once stood for, but the pleasure of hearing new tricks from familiar friends more than makes up for the grumbling of a few malcontents.
Talking Heads are one of those iconic bands with a long and varied legacy that came to a conclusion before I really knew anything about them. Born out of the punk movement of the late seventies, the band carved out their own unique niche with their nervous, herky-jerky, minimalistic, art-house fair. Early hits like Psycho Killer, Burning Down the House, Once in a Lifetime, and Heaven established the band as art house pioneers, playing with the ideas of song structure and subject matter while at the same time creating a cold, detached, almost de-humanized (and, yes, rather pretentious) mystique for the band. Their fantastic 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense only helped to solidify their legacy as a band determined to rebel against all expectations.
Fans who flocked to them for their unique defiance of popular music conventions felt a little dismayed, then, when the group's 1985 album Little Creatures came along and embraced the simplest, most straightforward elements of pop to create three of band's most effervescent, accessible hits, And She Was, Stay Up Late, and Road to Nowhere.
Opening up the with an enthusiastic "hey!" and a light guitar riff that rings like music box chimes, And She Was kicks off the album with a veritable assault of infectious pop hooks. The lines of the verses that roll like ocean waves, the simple snare-kick drum rhythm, the ebullient "hey hey, hey hey, hey! fills, the sharp electric guitar counter-rhythms that muscle their way into the end of the song, and the psychedelic one-with-the-universe excitement of the lyrics all mesh together to form a flawless snapshot of musical bliss. The song's candy-coated veneer from producer Eric Thorngren, just shy of cloyingly over-the-top, simply adds to the song's feeling of sonic joy. Looking back now, it's unmistakably a Talking Heads song, but back in 1985, it was a simplistic pop manifesto the likes of which the band had never released before.
Those other big hits fit in a little better with the band's traditional darker, more cynical tone, but they still mix in a healthy serving of sugary simplicity and catchy charm. With its bluesy piano stomp, its staccato vocal rhythms, and its eminently sing-along chorus, Stay Up Late is an unforgettable tribute to innocent (or not-so-innocent) mischief. And as for Road to Nowhere, the closing song for the album, its gospel chorus intro, its military march drumbeat, its cajun accordion riffs, and its goofy sounding vocal delivery all stand in contrast to the song's bleak lyrics, but still combine into a superbly energetic track certain to get lodged in listeners' brains for weeks on end.
And She Was, Stay Up Late, and Road to Nowhere are the only songs that made the jump into the mass pop cultural consciousness, but that doesn't mean that the other songs are just filler. There's the steel guitar country twang of Creatures of Love, the bouncy falsetto strains of Perfect World, the swampy stomp of Walk It Down, syncopated world beat percussion of The Lady Don't Mind, the funk-pop of Television Man, and the alternately sinister sounding and exhuberant Give Me Back My Name. Each is catchy and quirky (perhaps a little too much so), and they all create something new and unique out of the new wave sound that was so prevalent in 1985. There's no mistaking that this is a mid eighties album, but rather than falling prey to the cliches of the era, it transcends them and ends up as something timeless.
There's no denying that Little Creatures is a classic album. It may not have the absolute best of the band's songs, but it is the band's most consistent effort, never wandering off far on experimental digressions as they tend to do on their other albums.
Would I love Little Creatures as much as I do if I had been one of the people who grew up with the band and wasn't expecting a more mainstream pop sound from the band? It's hard to say. But as the connoisseur of catchy feel-good melodies, charmingly quirky song craft, and lush, sunny rhythms, I cannot thank David Byrne and his bandmates enough for evolving into the group that made this record.
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