Remain In Light [CD]

If anyone needs to be persuaded why Talking Heads were just a great band, not merely a great new wave band or a great post-punk band but a band up there with anyone else, 'Remain In Light', their ineffably spooky and moving masterpiece, is surely the evidence required.

The band's singer and chief songwriter David Byrne was, by his own admission, suffering writer's block around 1980. He had just written the bulk of three increasingly brilliant and increasingly dark Heads albums - '77', 'More Songs About Buildings And Food' and 'Fear Of Music' - and was understandably a little burned out. Producer Brian Eno and he were forming a close friendship and working partnership that other members of the band, chiefly bass player Tina Weymouth, felt was becoming over-intellectual and elitist. The band had various goes at making this album, in various studios, and ended up splicing bits of jams together to make something like songs. Byrne and Eno wrote odd bits of lyrics to sing over the top, and session players like Adrian Belew and Jon Hassell were brought in to provide tasteful (or in Belew's case, fabulously untasteful) musical embellishment. Other people have tried the same method since. It has almost never worked.

Whatever the unhappy circumstances of its making, 'Remain In Light' was a combination of the Heads rhythm section's exceptionally funky drive, Byrne's worry and paranoia, Eno's benign world-music inclusivity, and some special extra ingredient that lifts the whole thing into a frankly mystical level of trancelike intensity and directness. The whole album is laced with gossamer-fine overdubs, so that every time you listen to it you hear something you hadn't heard before. It moves from the urgent and faintly menacing ('Crosseyed and Painless') to the devastatingly sad ('Listening Wind') to the trippily ecstatic ('Once In A Lifetime') with seemingly no strain.

It's one of my favourite albums of all time, as you can probably tell, and it contains my favourite recording of all time in the form of 'Once In A Lifetime', the record that takes the nausea out of existentialism and replaces it with something very like bliss.

Talking Heads made many fine recordings before and after, some as good as this, perhaps. Brian Eno never made anything as good ever again. This was also the recording in which the schism that would later tear the band apart first became evident. Check out the solo recordings that the various members made around this time (Byrne's 'The Catherine Wheel', Harrison's 'The Red and the Black', Weymouth's and Frantz's 'Tom Tom Club') and you will begin to see why, eight years later, Talking Heads would be no more.

They were fab. And this is their finest almost-hour.

A fantastic re-mastering of this fine, fine record. I have heard this so many times I never thought I'd find something else but this remastering has brought new colour to this record.

This record spent 3 months on my turntable after it was released! I still return to it again and again. The first three tracks are one of the few musical experiences which have moved me to tears several times and if 'Crosseyed and Painless' and 'The Great Curve' don't inspire some sort of urge to dance.....you're probably dead!

'Remain in Light' is Talking Heads at their creative peak. 'Fear of Music' is also fantastic but where 'Fear of Music' is paranoid, prickly and taut, 'Remain in Light' is wreckless, wild and moving to all the horizons. Brian Eno is a massive influence here. Rumour has it, apart from Byrne, the other band members were incresingly resentful of his influence in the band but it's unlikely anything as wonderful as this record would have been created without his huge input.

The key track is 'The Great Curve'. The depth and construction of the vocal tracks is staggering. I've listened to it hundreds of times and still hear new patterns emerging. A real highlight in popular music.

What was originally the second side of the original LP is a different beast to the first three tracks. Again, the African influence is dominant but the themes are darker, such as resistance to Western domination, self doubt, questioning of life purpose and choices. It's a heady mix which fits as a wonderful counter-point to the head on mania and uplifting surges of the first side. All in all a wonderful record which everyone should hear.

I was always disappointed in the orignial CD releases of Talking Headss albums, however, I did have hope after the remastered editions of Stop Making Sense and The Name of this Band... were released. Now the waiting is over with these exceptional CD DVDA remastered editions. The CD of Remain In Light sounds wonderful and the bonus tracks are of genuine interest. The DVD audio sounds even better on a 5.1 system with some low key but beautiful graphics and the added bonus of videos. The live version of Once in a Lifetime is great. Seeing David Byrne in particular having such fun performing is heart warming and the seeming effortless ease of Adrian Belews guitar playing explains why he was in such demand at the time ( he was asked to and did join the bands of Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads, The Tom Tom Club and King Crimson) and we can all hear the unique contribution he made in each case. I will no doubt be replacing the rest of my Talkiing Heads collection with thesewonderfuls quality and great values editions. Don'y hesitate buy it!