Speaking in Tongues is an incredible album. Most bands slow down by their fifth album, but not the heads. Just when you think that they don't have any more brilliant creative riffs and bass lines they bring you this remarkable piece of art. The guitars are not as heavy on this as on previous albums. They incorporate many other synthesized elements into the mix but the results are very satisfying. All the other elements are still there: great songwriting, intellectually challenging lyrics, and rhythmic and melodic bass lines and guitar riffs. In terms of the songs themselves all of them are great. From track one to track nine every song is great and will have you singing along or dancing. "Making Flippy Floppy" is particularly energetic and danceable. It combines all the elements that characterize the heads and make them a truly great American band. Other standout tracks are "Burning Down the House," "Girlfriend is better," "Slippery People," hell just about every track. One great track that is really a standout is "Naive Melody (this must be the place)." This track is notable because it is perhaps the only real love song that David Byrne has ever written. It is about being thrilled to be with another person and is about faithfulness, at least this is what I gather. I also personally love this song because it has such a great, hypnotic guitar riff that is played throught the entire song. It is really a perfect way to end the album. It is so hard to rank the heads albums because just about everyone of them (especially the first five) is so good. Yet, still this has to be one of their best.

After purchasing all the remastered albums and listening to both sides of these dualdiscs inside and out, I have come to the earth-shattering conclusion that SPEAKING IN TONGUES is in fact their finest achievement. Prior to these reissues, I was a devotee of FEAR OF MUSIC and REMAIN IN LIGHT, but the extraordinary remastering here reveals previously indistinct, nuanced layers. Indeed, all previous iterations of this album were compromised (especially the truncated versions of some of the songs on the original vinyl release), while this is the definitive version. Songs are finally allowed to play out as extended jams, and it adds to the overall free-form feel. Even more than REMAIN, this is their most experimental sounding album, and the tracks that I once wrote off as filler ("Pull Up The Roots," "I Get Wild/Wild Gravity") now sound both resistently enigmatic and eminently danceable. In comparison, LITTLE CREATURES sounds all the more diminished, while TRUE STORIES is, well...pretty terrible (although I'm partial to about half of NAKED). And O-U-T (but no hard feelings...)

From the first track, the classic "Burning Down The House" to the final, euphoric "This Must be the Place," this album puts a big old smile on your face! It makes you feel like dancing, running, jumping and loving. Even playing this album for little kids, they instinctively get up and start bouncing around; it's just that infectious. Like others, I have always been insanely moved by the aforementioned "This Must be the Place," which I think just might be the best song this wonderful band ever wrote, which is certainly saying something. Still, at this great price, you'd be foolish not to add this joy to your life!

Variously described as punk rock, art rock, alternative rock, and new wave, The Talking Heads originally formed in 1974 and became one of many cutting-edge bands to emerge from New York's legendary CBGB'S, the proving ground of such diverse acts as Patti Smith, Blondie, Television, and Mink DeVille. By 1977 the band had sufficient momentum to get a record deal and within a few years the band began to register on both sides of the Atlantic--but although they were well known to fans of alternative music, it wasn't really until 1983 that Talking Heads truly crashed the music charts. The release that did it was SPEAKING IN TONGUES.

According David Byrne, the lyrics were originally ad libbed nonsense phrases--but these ad libs gradually developed a life of their own, and while each phrase in each song doesn't necessarily make any sort of narrative sense they do make a sort of emotional and kinetic sense in tandem with the band's sonic extremes, which range from borderline out of control to meticulously detail work--and often within the same song.

It's an odd thing to say about an "art band," but most music by The Talking Heads is very danceable--and the selections from TONGUES is no exception. Everything has a strong beat, a solid drive, be it the opening and prickly-sounding "Burning Down The House" or the closing and surprisingly delicate "This Must Be The Place." But what really sets The Talking Heads apart from every other band of the era is the way it fiddles with musical ideas. You find a bit of everything here: African rythmns, pop riffs, growly rock vocals, sweet glosses.

"Burning Down The House" is the cut that everyone knows (it was the band's only top ten American hit), but this is a case where it's all good and personal favorites are simply that: personal favorites. Returning to the recording after some years, I did not necessarily link a title with a particular song... until I heard the first few notes and was instantly as into the piece as I was in 1983. It's hard to select a favorite, but if I had to do so I'd give to either "Swamp" or "This Must Be The Place."

Some Talking Heads fans dismiss SPEAKING IN TONGUES as a case of the band beginning to sell out to industry demands for a more pop-inflected, more radio-friendly sound. It is true that the album is more pop-inflected than most of the band's work, but the inflection is comparative; it's not anywhere within the mainstream of popular music. It was, however, the beginning of the end of the band, for it focused public attention on David Byrne who thereafter began an effort to artistically dominate bandmates Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth--which effectively split the band after a few more releases. But whatever the case, they were on the cutting edge in their day and that edge hasn't dulled in over twenty years. Still unlike any other band, still same as it ever was. Recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

This is the first album I ever purchased. It would have been a Weird Al Yankovic album (DARE TO BE STUPID, specifically) if not for seeing the movie Revenge of the Nerds as a child, and hearing "Burning Down the House" played in the frat party scene near the beginning. I just thought it was a cool robotic-sounding song, and had no idea that the rest of the album would blow my 10-year-old mind the way it did.

It's often been my experience that the first thing you hear from a band strongly affects how you judge the rest of their work, so if you dive into the middle of their discography the earlier albums simply sound like precursors and the later albums sound like deviations. That's exactly how Speaking in Tongues has affected Talking Heads for me. Of course in this instance, it helps that this is truly the best album the group ever put out. Expanding their sound massively by adding backup singers and extra orchestration, the group stretched out their original nervous, jittery sound into a spacious, rhythmic, eccentric groove, full of unexpected percussive and lyrical asides, eerie melodies and inexplicable drama that catches you up even if you don't understand it. David Byrne's lyrics are in high obtuse mode here, and while I imagine he's making sense to himself (despite his chant of "stop making sense!" at the end of the song "Girlfriend Is Better"), he seems to be basically painting with words from our perspective. But it's a lovely painting.

It's difficult for me to be objective about this record because I've been listening to it for 22 years, but there are so many high points on it: obviously the bombastic "Burning Down the House", but also the careening "Making Flippy Floppy" and "Pull Up the Roots" (the latter riding a piano line with almost unbearable tension), "Girlfriend Is Better", which sounds like Parliament on downers, and the spare, abstract pieces "Slippery People" (with a pronounced gospel influence) and "I Get Wild/Wild Gravity". There's more great songs, but I don't want to spoil all the surprises for you. I've bought lots of Talking Heads records since this point, but their early work ('77, FEAR OF MUSIC) lacks the nuance of this album, and on subsequent records (TRUE STORIES, NAKED) the insistent groove seems to fade away, like they couldn't concentrate long enough to maintain it. There's no really bad Talking Heads album, but this is unquestionably their best.