Album: Little Creatures
Year: 1985
. . .
At the time, 1985’s Little Creatures was kind of seen as Talking Heads “back to basics,” a return to basic rock and pop after two albums of afro-funk. The truth, of course, was more complicated, as one of the things about most purported “back to basics” albums, from Let it Be to Some Girls to All That You Can’t Leave Behind is that you can’t unlearn all the things you’ve learned. And so Little Creatures sounded fuller than say Talking Heads ’77, because it was eight years later. Also, there was what seemed like a conscious lack of of danceable songs, focusing more on straight rock or even country rhythms and sounds.
That said, there was one back-to-basics move on Little Creatures: rather than studio jams, the songs were mostly primarily written by David Byrne, a completely different from the studio jams with added words that dominated Speaking in Tongues and Remain in Light. That said, it definitely had one thing in common with Speaking in Tongues: the album open and closed with its two best songs, and in between was a bunch of quality but not transcendent songs — though I know that some of you will stan for “Stay Up Late,” which I love musically but don’t love lyrically — that made for a perfectly fine record.
Oh, and the second Howard Finster album cover out in the world in two years, to boot.
Little Creatures establishes its tone instantly with “And She Was” which starts with Jerry Harrison keyboards ringing around a tricksy start-and-stop beat from Chris Frantz over which Byrne sings about a girl who was having a great acid trip while lying in a field. As you do.
And she was lying in the grass
And she could hear the highway breathing
And she could see a nearby factory
She’s making sure she is not dreaming
See the lights of a neighbor’s house
Now she’s starting to rise
Take a minute to concentrate
And she opens up her eyes
And then Harrison and Tina Weymouth join on the lovely chorus — whatever issues they had with the vocals on Speaking in Tongues long gone — with Chris Frantz now just playing a straightforward beat.
The world was moving and she was
Right there with it, and she was
The world was moving, she was
Floating above it, and she was
And she was
And so it went, floating through an anthemic bridge and a cool pre-chorus where all Byrne says is “hey hey hey hey” until it finally landed into a fantastic outro where everybody chants “And she was” for awhile. My favorite part of that outro — even more than Byrnes “hey hey” interjections — is a couple shots of big guitar that probably could have been there all along, but wouldn’t have had nearly the same effect had it been there all along.
“And She Was” was the second single from Little Creatures, and the only one of that album’s four singles that charted in the U.S. — despite (or because of) the usual clever video — stalling out at #54 on the Billboard Hot 100, though it did make it to #17 in the U.K. Meanwhile, despite the fact that Little Creatures was the first Talking Heads studio album to do worse on the U.S. album charts than its predecessor — #20 compared to Speaking in Tongues #15 — it turned out to be their biggest-selling studio album, the only one that’s gone double-platinum
“And She Was” Official Music Video
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“Stay Up Late” is the one song in the entire Talking Heads catalog that I would genuinely classify as flat-out BAD. It’s like their “My Ding-A-Ling.” As far as “Little Creatures,” I don’t think it’s a bad album but it’s certainly their least inspired. Despite essentially being David Bryne solo projects with the Heads as a backing band, “True Stories” and “Naked” are flawed but interesting, “Little Creatures” mostly just sits there.
That said, “And She Was,” “The Lady Don’t Mind” and “Road to Nowhere” are great songs in any context and I understand that every band needs their “accessible” album.