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THE TALKING HEADS - 77 (DUAL DISC)

THE TALKING HEADS/77 (DUAL DISC)

Though they were the most highly touted new wave band to emerge from the CBGB's scene in New York, it was not clear at first whether Talking Heads' Lower East Side art rock approach could make the subway ride to the midtown pop mainstream successfully. The leadoff track of the debut album, Talking Heads: 77, 'Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town,' was a pop song that emphasized the group's unlikely roots in late-'60s bubblegum, Motown, and Caribbean music. But the 'Uh-Oh' gave away the group's game early, with its nervous, disconnected lyrics and David Byrne's strained voice. All pretenses of normality were abandoned by the second track, as Talking Heads finally started to sound on record the way they did downtown: the staggered rhythms and sudden tempo changes, the odd guitar tunings and rhythmic, single-note patterns, the non-rhyming, non-linear lyrics that came across like odd remarks overheard from a psychiatrist's couch, and that voice, singing above its normal range, its falsetto leaps and strangled cries resembling a madman trying desperately to sound normal.

1. Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town   
2. New Feeling   
3. Tentative Decisions   
4. Happy Day   
5. Who Is It?   
6. No Compassion   
7. The Book I Read   
8. Don't Worry About The Government   
9. First Week/Last Week...Care Free   
10. Psycho Killer   
11. Pulled Up