Remain in Light

TALKING HEADS

Sire

With Remain in Light, Talking Heads established themselves as the most musically ambitious of the bands that emerged from the CBGB punk scene. Influenced by Fela and other African acts, as well as Jamaican dub and world-music in general, the Heads adopt a groove-first aesthetic, driven by funky, syncopated drums, punchy bass vamps and interlocking guitars. David Byrne's jittery vocals and mock-paranoid non sequiturs prove both funny and unsettling, and the choruses — oft-times patterned after African call-and-response chants — only add to the album's anxious otherworldliness. Includes the studio version of "Once in Lifetime."

This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2006.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...