#126 Remain in Light - Talking Heads (now #129)

There is a Southpark episode where any new music or television that Stan is exposed to sounds and looks like big piles of shit.  I felt a lot like Stan this week while listening to this cacophony of suck.  If you haven't noticed, dear reader, I have been trying very hard to stick it out with albums, even if I don't like them at first and do my best to appreciate the album for the band's goal and what it tried to accomplish.  I have been very successful, even with genres that I wouldn't normally like.  But this is stretching my optimism too far.

My experience with this album was very short.  Like listening to the Smiths, I did my exact two times through, and to be perfectly honest, I couldn't listen to the last two songs on the album again.  My anxiety and frustration would build up and control me and would only be abated if I turned off the disjointed, pointless noise.

 How on earth did this album make it to #126?  I really felt that this was a joke.  It honestly didn't even sound like music to me.  It just made my blood pressure raise because I was so impatient for the next song to begin.  There is all this twinkling and clanging and then someone begins to moan followed by women wailing a chorus in return and then they cue the last yelps of six one-eyed capybaras in a-cappella.  I could feel my left eye twitching and my right leg bouncing as I stared at the seconds decreasing across my iPhone screen for each song.  

I tried to think, well, each genre and generation of music has certain sounds and beats and rhythms that they adapt to and grow up with.  And that sounds like music to them.  I tried my hardest to get into the mindset of a person who prefers to listen to the Talking Heads more than any other band and I just couldn't even picture a single person or what he or she might look like.  Maybe he was someone who twitched a lot while flaring his nostrils and alternated speaking German phrases at parties for attention and commenting on topics like which black lights were better for finding stains on his little brother's sheets vs. which black lights might be more efficient for heating the closet where he keeps his Komodo Dragon collection.  But what do I know.

The ray of sunshine in the whole album was "Once in a Lifetime" which was probably the only tract that resembled anything like music.  If that song wasn't in there, there is no way this album would have made it to the list because everyone would have clawed their eyes out.

In Sum,

This was how my subconscious interpreted all of these bizarre sounds thrown together:

A Wild Snorlax +

This Dr. Seuss Instrument +

This Awkward Family Photo +

Dr. Ian Malcolm's discovery of Jurassic Shit

Here is what the Rolling Stone Mag had to say (nothing good.  The author totally doesn't know what to say and tries to be original with his description, but mine are clearly better; afropop, come on, cacophony of suck and 6 one eyed capybara is way more descriptive.  I win.):

On this New Wave watershed, the avant-punk avatars became polyrhythmic pop magicians. David Byrne and Co. combined the thrust of P-Funk, the kinky grooves of Afropop and the studied adventurousness of producer Brian Eno – and they still had a pop hit with "Once in a Lifetime."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/500-greatest-albums-of-all-time-20120531/talking-heads-remain-in-light-20120524#ixzz2Da8XAuuj 
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