TALKING HEADS: 77

I've recently been getting into Talking Heads, finding their interesting brand of nervous energy and playfulness making for a lot of extremely entertaining material, but that said, while I feel that Talking Heads 77 embodies certain elements of the band's identity quite clearly, it also misses the mark in some areas in ways that ultimately make me enjoy this far less than the next few albums to come after it. While you can hear a lot of their sound here, with a far more distinct, well-realised sound to a lot of other bands with their debut, there are also a fair few aspects of it that end up being unrefined, with a more conventional new wave sound in a lot of parts clashing with the more eccentric sensibilities of the band, especially in terms of David Byrne's vocals. While it's easy to see how his vocals could be off-putting to some, I feel like this album really accentuates these more potentially annoying aspects of his voice. Furthermore, the album is quite inconsistent compared to some of their slightly later output, with a lot of songs sounding more like half-baked sketches or just ideas that really didn't pan out to become anything meaningful, culminating in a very promising, yet somewhat underwhelming album.

All the problems I just mentioned don't really come up in the first 3 songs however, especially in Uh Oh, Love Comes to Town, which embodies a lot of the great aspects of the band. I love how upbeat and funky this song is, just feeling really fun throughout, especially with the choice of using steel drums in various parts of the song, giving that extra little hint of quirkiness to it while also just sounding really good in general. New feeling is probably one of the songs on the album that closest resembles the lightly later albums of the band, with a lot of focus to the rhythmic elements of the song and their extremely meticulous sounding interplay, each note contributing to a very anxious tone, hints of distortion and the at times almost panicked delivery of David Byrne solidifying this, all while making the song a ton of fun to listen to at the same time. Tentative Decisions is more minimalistic than some others on the album, and I really mostly like it for the great groove of the chorus, not much to say here.

It's from here where the album goes downhill for a while to me, especially with Happy Day, which is the main song I was talking about when I mentioned David Byrne's vocals potentially being annoying. The song on the whole just doesn't feel like it goes anywhere, making it quite dull, so when it's combined with the vocals on the chorus, where he just seems like he's poorly trying to hit a high note repeatedly, and failing, making it a reasonably rare case of vocals strongly putting me completely off a song. Who Is It? follows these issues, once again sounding extremely uneventful and directionless, with the same line repeated ad nauseum as the song goes absolutely nowhere and doesn't even have anything particularly interesting going on anyway. No Compassion, while it definitely has some potential, especially with the way it periodically switches to a more bouncy rhythm before settling back down in the slightly more subdued stuff. the issue I have with it is that in the end I find that despite the fact it's only about 5 minutes, it really ends up dragging, the entire last verse and chorus being something that could easily be cut out without any major loss, through the song as a whole ends up feeling repetitive regardless.

It's First Week / Last Week where I consider the album to finally find its feet again fortunately, and ends up being one of my favourites on the album, just a really great song with some amazing vocal melodies. Psycho Killer is similarly really great, and is deservedly considered one of the absolute classics in their discography, once again bringing out the more anxious vibe, but also being easily the catchiest thing on the album, and it isn't even close. The part where Byrne starts singing in French is another really charming little aspect of this song, especially the way it really ends up feeling like he ups the intensity during this section, something further heightened by the guitar solo at the end as the song gradually speeds up, each beat being extremely prominent due to the bassline. Pulled Up closes off the album decently, as while it's not quite as good as the previous 2 songs, it's another one of the more entertaining songs here, I especially like the faster pace of it, especially when compared to the predominantly mid-paced nature of the album. While my score of this album and overall opinion on it don't reflect anything to do with the bonus tracks, I just quickly want to mention that people really should listen to these when listening to the album, as most of them are actually better than even some of the highlights from the regular tracklist.

Overall, there's little doubt in my mind that there's quite a bit of greatness in this album, but there's even less doubt that I'm just not a fan of half of the album in the slightest, with a couple of songs I'd go even as far as saying are outright bad, along with a few that are just very mediocre, often not making up for the fun high points that the album has. This band definitely went on to become something great, and some of this album already shows their greatness, but on the whole, it's not really an album that I'd go back to particularly often.

Best tracks: Uh Oh, Love Comes to Town, Psycho Killer, First Week / Last Week....Carefree

Weakest tracks: Happy Day, Who Is It?, Don't Worry About the Government