Talking Heads
Stop Making Sense [Deluxe Version]
RHINO
Beyond its iconic oversized white suits and its expanded lineup’s dancing with abandon, Jonathan Demme’s Talking Heads concert documentary Stop Making Sense is best regarded for its sonic reach into deep, limber, Parliament-Funkadelic-esque funk, the likes of which influenced everything James Murphy’s LCD and DFA could ever hope to accomplish.
Re-released now with additional live tracks in celebration of its 40th anniversary, the Stop Making Sense soundtrack’s deluxe version portrays America’s last most-innovative ensemble at a crossroads, uniting under one groove while splintering soulfully—both David Byrne and and the marrieds Tiny Weymouth/Chris Frantz show off their individual wares, the former with his “What a Day That Was” epiphany and a wobbly “Big Business” from his The Catherine Wheel solo LP getting tacked onto the holy chant of “I Zimbra” and the latter with Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love” performed mid-set. For the record, the fourth Head, Jerry Harrison, produced this 1984 live album, concert film mix, and its 2023 revisiting.
To be certain, Talking Heads had already worked out the elements of space and distance while working with producer-collaborator Brian Eno on their live documentary’s predecessors, More Songs about Buildings and Food and Fear of Music. By the time Talking Heads and Eno got to the Fela Kuti–inspired Remain in Light, and their churchy, Eno-less Speaking in Tongues, the band’s command of frenetic rhythm and liquid ambience joined for something uniquely forceful and offbeat—and probably heard best in live settings.
It didn’t hurt that Talking Heads brought instrumental R&B gods such as The Brothers Johnson’s Alex Weir, P-Funk’s Bernie Worrell, and free percussionist Steve Scales into the grand, unsteady concert mix. It’s like Frantz wrote in the liner notes of the band’s best-of comp Once in a Lifetime: “When [‘Slippery People’] was originally recorded on Speaking in Tongues, it had a funky and compact sound. This Stop Making Sense version is funky and big as a house. (Or should I say church).”
While Byrne’s beatboxed “Psycho Killer” still reigns as the best-ever introductory concert cut, the open, airy “Heaven” and the art-quirk of “Thank You for Sending Me an Angel” and “Found a Job” remind listeners that Talking Heads were a cutting foursome before their radical expansion. Once engorged, a thrumming “Swamp,” the squeaking funk of "Slippery People,” and the cathedral soul of “Burning Down the House” and “Once in a Lifetime” are both epic in their individualism and part of a tasty, groovy, caramel-coated whole.
