Qu'est-ce Que C'est

Talking Heads : Psycho Killer

[Purchase]

On September 16, 1977 Talking Heads released its debut album, Talking Heads:77.  No album from this eventful year means as much to me as this one. The very first song I played on my radio show at WTUL was "Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town". At my boarding school, I remember the walls shaking from Tina Weymouth's "Psycho Killer" bass and leaping down the stairwell to find out what I was hearing. I bought the cassette and played it to death. 

Here, in David Byrne, I had found someone just as obsessed, and just as confused, by girls as I was. And I was absurdly confused. (I am horrified at the memories that swarm in front of me). Yes, this was a soundtrack to my lonely and awkward years in boarding school.

 To this day, there are lines from songs that will pop up in my mind like thought bubbles:

They say compassion is a virtue but I don't have the time.

I go visiting, I talk loud I try to make myself clear

Go talk to your analyst, isn't that what they're paid for You walk, you talk, you still function like you used to It's not a question of your personality or style Be a little more selfish, it might do you some good.

You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed Say something once, why say it again?

Enough about me.

From Stephen Demores of Rolling Stone:

 Talking Heads are the last of CBGB's original Big Four to record (following Patti Smith, the Ramones and Television), and their debut is an absolute triumph. Dressing like a quartet of Young Republicans, playing courteously toned-down music and singing lyrics lauding civil servants, parents and college, Talking Heads are not even remotely punks. Rather, they are the great Ivy League hope of pop music. I can't recall when I last heard such a vital, imaginatively tuneful album.

 David Byrne's music is refreshing, abundantly varied and fun to listen to. He takes the buoyant, post-Beatles singles format of the Sixties -- brisk pacing, great hooks, crisp playing, bright production -- and impulsively veers off on unexpected tangents that are challenging without becoming inaccessible.
This is the band that had its early critics talking about minimalism and like Jonathan Richman. Talking Heads do indeed triumph by the economy of their sound. But where the ingenuous Richman is dangerously precious there is no nonsense about Talking Heads. Byrne's spare guitar patterns, Jerry Harrison's modest keyboard fills, Martina Weymouth's understated bass and Chris Frantz' efficiently Spartan drumming convey a taut earnestness that's bursting with energy.

 "The Book I Read," like so many of their songs, burbles with excitement, a feeling of expansion overcoming restraint. "Pulled Up" is the real champ, though, a fiercely exhilarating rush of aural amyl nitrate.

 Vocally, Byrne's live-wired personality vibrates his precise musical framework like a caged tiger rattling its bars. (That he sings in a stiff, reedy, "bad" voice, grasping or higher notes like a drowning man lunging for air, only heightens the drama.) Exploring the logic and disorientation of love, decision making, ambition and the need for selfishness, he gropes for articulation like a metaphysician having difficulty computing emotions.

 Given his relatively unlyrical nature, Byrne's burgeoning persona is not in the least tentative. "No Compassion" asserts all the impatience of Lou Reed in a band mood, while "Psycho Killer" pulses with vehemence.

 For me, the direct, crisp, jaunty Talking Heads and the abstracted, unrestrained, fiery Television stand as the Beatles and Rolling Stones of the restless, displaced Seventies. Not only is this a great album, it's also one of the definitive records of the decade.

From Robert Christgau's A- review:

A debut LP will often seem overrefined to habitués of a band's scene, so it's not surprising that many of CBGBites felt betrayed when bits of this came out sounding like Sparks or Yes. Personally, I was even more put off by lyrics that fleshed out the Heads' post-Jonathan Richman, so-hip-we're-straight image; when David Byrne says "don't worry about the government," the irony is that he's not being ironic. But the more I listen the more I believe the Heads set themselves the task of hurdling such limitations, and succeed. Like Sparks, these are spoiled kids, but without the callowness or adolescent misogyny; like Yes, they are wimps, but without vagueness or cheap romanticism. Every tinkling harmony is righted with a screech, every self-help homily contextualized dramatically, so that in the end the record proves not only that the detachment of craft can coexist with a frightening intensity of feeling -- something most artists know -- but that the most inarticulate rage can be rationalized. Which means they're punks after all.

The album made number 60 in the 1978 UK album charts, and single “Psycho Killer” peaked at position 92 of the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978.