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American thrashers, Exodus, have announced that they have parted ways with frontman, Steve “Zetro” Souza. They also confirmed the return of former singer, Rob Dukes, who was previously with the band from 2005 – 2014. A message from the band follows:
“Announcement! Exodus have parted ways with Steve “Zetro” Souza. We thank Steve for his years fronting the band and all the killer music we made during that time. We wish him only the best in the future and much success with anything he does.
“And please help us welcome Rob Dukes back to Exodus! We are beyond stoked to have Rob back ripping up the stage with us and he’s looking forward to crushing everything like only he can.
“Next chapter begins, new record rolls along as planned and the beatings will continue. See you soon.”
In support for America’s veterans, Vet Tix is proud to announce that Minutemen Family of Companies and Barney Monk Event Staffing donated $50,000 to provide free tickets for veterans to attend Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s (TSO) electrifying 2024 winter tour, The Lost Christmas Eve. In an inspiring gesture of generosity, TSO matched this donation dollar-for-dollar.
This latest donation to Vet Tix is a testament to the ongoing commitment of TSO and Jay Lucarelli President and CEO Minutemen Family of Companies and Barney Monk Event Staffing to support the veteran community. With this contribution, veterans across the country were able to experience the unforgettable magic of TSO’s grand return of The Lost Christmas Eve to stages across the country.
“We are incredibly grateful to Jay Lucarelli, The Minutemen Family of Companies, and Barney Monk Event Staffing for their generous support of our mission to provide unforgettable experiences for our nation’s heroes,” said Vet Tix Founder, CEO and U.S. Navy veteran Michael A. Focareto III. “This partnership allows us to give the magic of TSO to those who have served our country with courage and sacrifice.”
This contribution brought TSO’s total charitable donations for the 2024 tour to over $800,000 – at least $1 for every concert ticket sold- further solidifying the band’s commitment to giving back to the community. Since its first tour, TSO has now surpassed an impressive $20 million in total charitable giving.
The 2024 TSO tour, which began on November 13 and concluded December 30, featured a completely reimagined production of The Lost Christmas Eve with cutting-edge visuals, pyrotechnics, and a high-energy second set packed with TSO’s greatest hits and fan favorites.
Previously, the partnership between Lucarelli, his companies, and TSO has had a significant impact on the group’s charitable efforts, adding $65,000 to TSO’s charity donations during the 2023 tour alone.
(Pictured at top, left to right: Adam Lind (Night Castle Management), TSO’s Chris Caffery, Jay Lucarelli)
“You have to destroy things in order to create things. And I did destroy a really beautiful life.” Lucy Dacus announces new album Forever Is A Feeling, shares two new singles and North American tour dates
(Image credit: Andrew Benge/Redferns)
Having conquered the known world as one-third of indie rock supergroup Boygenius, Lucy Dacus has announced a new solo album, Forever Is A Feeling.
The follow-up to 2021’s Home Video, Forever Is A Feeling is set for release on March 28 via Polydor. And as a taste of what’s two come, Dacus has shared two singles from the record, Ankles and Limerence.
Speaking of her mind-set making the album, Dacus says, “I got kicked in the head with emotions. Falling in love, falling out of love. You have to destroy things in order to create things. And I did destroy a really beautiful life.”
“I think with this whole record, I wrote songs as things were happening,” Dacus tells Dazed. “A lot of the time, it’s taken years before I can write about something, but this is the first time I felt like I needed to write about my current emotions, for my own well-being, to express to myself what’s going on.”
“Sometimes I’m in the mood where I’m so happy, I wish I could live forever,” she adds. “But I think it’s silly that these people are trying to live forever, because they’re not going to do it. You have a limited amount of time, which should inspire you to just enjoy things. I see people like that, and I feel bad because they live constantly in fear, and I don’t want to live that way.”
Listen to the album’s first two singles below:
Lucy Dacus – Ankles (Official Music Video) – YouTube
The singer/songwriter has also announced a North American tour. She will play:
Apr 16: Philadelphia The Met, PA Apr 18: Washington, DC The Anthem Apr 21: Boston MGM Music Hall, MA Apr 23: New York Radio City Music Hall, NY Apr 25: Toronto Massey Hall, Canada Apr 29: Nashville Ryman Auditorium, TN
May 01: Chicago Theatre, IL May 05: St. Paul Palace Theatre, MN May 07: Kansas City Midland, MI May 09: Dallas Winspear Opera House, TX May 10: Austin Moody Amphitheatre, TX May 12: Denver Red Rocks Amphitheatre, CO May 14: Los Angeles The Greek Theatre, CA
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A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.
In 2015, Baroness released their fourth album, Purple – the last to feature guitarist Peter Adams, who went on to focus on Valkyrie. Before that, though, he told Prog about how he discovered Camel – and the musical ambition Andy Latimer’s band had inspired in him.
“My parents raised me on good music in Virginia. They had a massive vinyl collection that I spent my youth thumbing through, so I got to listen to everything from The Allman Brothers to The Rolling Stones and tons of classic rock and blues.”
But my older brother Jake had the biggest influence on my musical taste. I knew about Pink Floyd when I was a kid, I love Gentle Giant, I’ve always liked Steve Hackett’s solo stuff, and Focus as well – I can really relate to all that – but Jake was the one who turned me on to Camel.
The first thing I heard of theirs was the live version of The Snow Goose, from A Live Record. It was recorded at the Royal Albert Hall; I think it’s an amazing record. It took me a minute to get into it, but once it had clicked, I was a major fan from then on.
Flight Of The Snow Goose (Live At Royal Albert Hall) – YouTube
At first I didn’t realise it was live. When the clapping came in, I was like, ‘This is live? That’s incredible!’ I had to hear the rest of Camel – I had to know what else this band had done, where they were going, what they were doing.
I went straight through their back catalogue. I really love their first self-titled album and a lot of stuff off Rain Dances but if I had to choose one, I’d say Moonmadness is probably my favourite. I love the flow of that album.
Right when people started carrying iPods, I borrowed one for a flight and I put Moonmadness on it. I remember it was a brilliant day, flying through the clouds and it was just the perfect soundtrack. I was listening to Air Born thinking, ‘This is great!’
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With Baroness, we’ve always had proggy bits but I would say it’s less and less these days compared to the past. I’ve thought about composing something on The Snow Goose scale though – I love that idea of taking something like a book, and trying to score it.
I read a lot of Robert Ruark and Peter Capstick, so who knows? Maybe we could do something with Hemingway’s Green Hills Of Africa? That’s the kind of stuff I love. Maybe one day…”
Bob Dylan this, Bob Dylan that. There’s been a lot of talk about Bob Dylan lately.
With the 2024 release — and phenomenal box office success — of A Complete Unknown starring Timothee Chalamet, the undeniably talented singer-songwriter has been at the front of a lot of people’s minds. Dylan is the subject of the film, but other characters, each integral to the American folk music scene of the early ’60s, surround him, including Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and Woody Gurthrie.
But those names are well-known. The fact of the matter is that “folk” (the genre is not always easy to define) artists like Dylan, Baez, Joni Mitchell, the Byrds, Judy Collins, Donovan and other musical stars of their day were heavily influenced by a whole host of less famous people.
In the below list, we’re running down 10 Folk Acts That Deserved More Respect. Without these people – and frankly this is just the tip of the iceberg — its possible there may not have been a Dylan or a folk music movement at all.
1. The New Lost City Ramblers
Entire books have been written about the folk revival of the late ’50s and early ’60s, but to briefly summarize: in America in particular, a swath of young musicians began performing and recording songs that were written years before their own birth, often with a political bent to the lyrics, taking elements of country, blues and gospel and turning it into what would ultimately become the foundation of protest music. Put another way, as one of the movement’s chief influencers Woody Guthrie once said: “It’s a folk singer’s job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people.”
The New Lost City Ramblers strived for as authentic a sound as possible, recording old-time style music of the ’20s and ’30s with what was then quite new technology — they had one album literally titled Songs From the Depression. This might sound a bit boring to you now, but at the time it was a refreshing change of pace from “classic pop” type music — Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Perry Como, etc.
2. Carolyn Hester
Anybody who was anybody in the folk revival world was in Greenwich Village in the first half of the ’60s. Apart from Cambridge, Massachusetts, it was arguably the epicenter of folk music. That’s how you wound up with recordings like the one below, with Carolyn Hester inviting a very young, barely heard of Bob Dylan to play harmonica on her album. (This session would eventually lead to Dylan getting signed himself to Columbia Records.) In those days, Hester, who hailed from Waco, Texas, was dubbed “The Texas Songbird,” and was a regular performer at venues like the Gaslight Cafe, Gerde’s Folk City and more.
3. Richard Farina and Mimi Baez
We’re grouping Richard Farina and Mimi Baez together here on account of, well, the fact that they were married to one another from 1963 until Farina’s death in a motorcycle accident in 1966. In that time they became an important duo in the folk scene, recording both traditional songs and ones penned by Farina himself. His original works were often political in nature — “Birmingham Sunday,” one of his best known songs, which was later recorded by his wife’s older sister Joan Baez, was about the murder of four children in a bombing orchestrated by white supremacists. But he was also what we might consider now a sort of connecting figure between the beats of the early ’60s and the hippies of the later half. “He was a serial fabulist,” David Hajdu, author of Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina, explained to The Guardian in 2016. “He made up wild stories about his life. He created a persona, and in him you can see the mercurial identity we know so well in artists from David Bowie to Madonna to Lady Gaga.”
4. Phil Ochs
It’s interesting how sometimes the most influential people in a given musical movement are often the ones with such little commercial success. Phil Ochs was that type, a sharp-witted songwriter who wrote some 200 songs in the span of roughly a decade, many of them in opposition to war and in support of civil rights. Among the artists who covered his songs: Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Cher, John Denver, Gordon Lightfoot and more. Ochs was a perfect example of what the folk revival wound up creating: a herd of singer-songwriters who found inspiration in the vein of historical folk music and used it to write material relevant to the present day.
5. The Roches
One thing that is important to understand about folk music is that it has experienced multiple shifts over the course of decades. The Roches, a trio of sisters, arrived during the sort of second wave of folk artists, the ones that followed people like Dylan and Baez by making music more along the lines of folk pop. In fact, the Roches got their break when Paul Simon hired them to sing backing vocals on his 1973 album There Goes Rhymin’ Simon. Their self-titled debut album was produced by Robert Fripp — yes, the one from King Crimson. Here was proof that acoustic guitar-based arrangements and rich harmonies had a place in the musical tapestry of the ’70s, even if disco was all the rage.
6. Judee Sill
Judee Sill appeared to have everything going for her. She was the first person signed to David Geffen’s own Asylum record label, which would also release albums by Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and more. Plus, Sill’s first two albums were acclaimed by critics and it was clear she possessed serious songwriting talent. “You could tell that she was taking everything in,” Graham Nashsaid of Sill in 2021. Sill toured with Crosby, Stills & Nash for a time as their opening act, and Nash himself produced Sill’s first single, “Jesus Was a Cross Maker.” “If she saw an old man on a street corner flashing by, you knew that it might end up as a line in one of her songs. Because she didn’t say much, you didn’t really know how bright she was.” For all intents and purposes, she was primed to be one of Los Angeles’ biggest musical stars, right up alongside fellow SoCal dwellers like Neil Young, Cass Elliot and others. And yet, major commercial success evaded the delicate-voiced Sill, who unfortunately never finished her third album, dying of a drug overdose in 1979.
7. Lead Belly
“If there was no Lead Belly, there would have been no Lonnie Donegan,” George Harrison purportedly once said. “No Lonnie Donegan, no Beatles. Therefore no Lead Belly, no Beatles.” But one could also argue that no Lead Belly, no Bob Dylan either. Dylan was one of many who quite literally discovered various folk song standards through the singer/guitarist. “Transported me into a world I’d never known,” Dylan wrote in his 2016 Nobel Prize speech. “It was like an explosion went off. Like I’d been walking in darkness and all of the sudden the darkness was illuminated. It was like somebody laid hands on me.” Lead Belly’s music, like other Black musicians of his era, received the most commercial success via the white artists who covered it, and it wasn’t until after his death that he earned more recognition for his work. But the fact of the matter remains: without Lead Belly, a whole generation of folk singers, rock ‘n’ rollers and blues lovers may not have existed the same way — and a certain someone may not have won a Nobel Prize.
8. Happy Traum
We could come up with a whole separate list titled something along the lines of “Integral Greenwich Village Folk Musicians.” Happy Traum would most definitely be on it, a member of the New World Singers, the group that recorded the first version of Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Traum was a consistent presence in both the studios of New York City and the local coffee houses, playing guitar with multiple different acts, including a duo with his brother Artie that Rolling Stone once said “defined the Northeast folk music style.” Traum embodied the kind of easy going, blues-adjacent style of finger picking that was then viewed as hip and informed, and could now be considered a building block for all acoustic guitar playing.
9. Jackson C. Frank
To be transparent: this writer has a special affinity for the late Jackson C. Frank since he also hails from Buffalo, New York. But he’s a bit different from the others on this list in that his eponymous debut album, which came out in 1965, was made in the U.K., where a similar folk revival was happening with artists like Donovan, Nick Drake and others. The album was produced by Paul Simon and was received well in England. Unfortunately, Frank’s mental health took a turn for the worse not long after and the remainder of his life was a difficult journey. His music, however, would ultimately be covered by the likes of John Mayer, Counting Crows, Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees and more.
10. David Blue
If you know the name David Blue you’ve probably seen clips from Dylan’s 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue, or perhaps you’re a really dedicated Eagles fan. Blue is the writer behind “Outlaw Man,” which appeared on the Eagles’ 1973 album Desperado. Before that though, he was a stalwart of the Greenwich Village folk scene, rubbing shoulders with all the people who would wind up world famous while Blue remained a cult artist of sorts. He’s also the man responsible for introducing Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne early on in their careers. “He knew everybody and he was there at the beginning,” singer/actress Ronee Blakley told Rolling Stone in 2020, “but he didn’t make it to the fullness of his talent and didn’t achieve the degree of success he deserved. It’s a difficult thing to predict. I don’t understand it. I really don’t.”
Top 100 ’60s Rock Albums
Here’s a chronological look at the 100 best rock albums of the ’60s.
According to a report by Forbes, Ozzy Osbourne has returned to the Billboard charts. He has scored a pair of Top 10 hits this month, as two of his most famous tracks have found their way onto the Hard Rock Digital Song Sales chart, which ranks the top-selling tunes in that genre across the US.
“Mama, I’m Coming Home” – originally released in November 1991 – has reappeared at #3, standing out as the loftiest return among all artists on the purchase-centric list. Meanwhile, “Crazy Train” – released in Augist 1980 – has landed at #5. The latter has spent a total of 217 weeks on the charts over the years.
“You’re 17, it’s a normal dumb night, then someone’s screaming, ‘Get on the floor!’ I’m gonna die. This is the end of my life”: The armed hold-up that set the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne on the road to music
(Image credit: Getty Images)
In 2020 the Flaming Lips were on a roll – literally. They’d come up with a plan to observe Covid regulations by performing in bubbles to support the launch of American Head, their second album in 18 months. Band leader Wayne Coyne told Prog its autobiographical nature included memories of an armed hold-up and dreams of living in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
“I don’t know if this album is prog rock, but it’s certainly in a classic rock style that could easily be considered prog, you know?” Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne is on the phone from a car outside his Oklahoma City home, discussing where his group’s current album, American Head, fits into the musical landscape.
If ever there was a band that made up their own rules, genres and stylistic templates, it’s the shape-shifting, psychedelically charged mavericks he’s fronted through countless experiments, detours, collaborations and reinventions since 1983.
One thing that American Head does have that Prog readers will instinctively understand is an over-arching concept, or at the very least a strong thematic basis knitting its 13 tracks together. And happily, it comes wrapped in some of the strongest, most evocative songs the band have written in years.
The seeds were planted when heartland rock icon Tom Petty passed away in 2017. “It affected us a lot,” says Coyne, “just like when Bowie died. But the thing that got my imagination going was that before the Heartbreakers they were called Mudcrutch, and they recorded sessions in Tulsa in the early 70s, just up the road from where we grew up in Oklahoma City.
The Flaming Lips – Flowers of Neptune 6 [Official Music Video] – YouTube
I would have been 12, 13 or so then, and my older brothers would go back and forth to Tulsa all the time – they knew drug dealers, bikers, all kinds of colourful people. So it’s kind of a fantasy of mine that my older brothers could have run into Mudcrutch. What if they’d stayed in Tulsa, got waylaid by the seedier side of the scene, and never become the Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers that we know. What would that album be like? Then we thought: what if we make it?
“The band already had “a couple of tracks that were like an Eagles record – the kind of gentle classic rock we always liked,” but at the same time they opted not to go fully down the method-acting route, and put some of their own identity in there too. “We wanted to veer away from the macho lyrics of that era,” says Coyne, “and maybe sing sad songs about our fucked-up families, about what might have happened in our own lives if fate had taken different turns, y’know?”
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We asked, ‘Is this really gonna work?’ Then we said, ‘We can do what we want – we’re The Flaming Lips!’
The “we” he speaks of encompasses his long-time lieutenant and co-songwriter Steven Drozd, who has a not dissimilar background to Coyne, with several wayward older siblings involved in countercultural shenanigans as far back as the late 60s. “We asked, ‘Is this really gonna work?’” says Coyne. “But then we said to ourselves, ‘We can do what we want – we’re The Flaming Lips!’”
There certainly seems to have been no limits to this band’s sense of adventure in the past. They’ve collaborated with everyone from Miley Cyrus to Yoko Ono, issued experiments such as Two Blobs Fucking – 12 YouTube videos designed to be played simultaneously – and presented The 24 Hour Song Skull, a day-long song on a memory stick presented inside, yes indeed, a skull.
The Flaming Lips – Mother Please Don’t Be Sad [Official Music Video] – YouTube
Last year’s album King’s Mouth was built around the tale, narrated by The Clash’s Mick Jones, of a giant monarch who saved his subjects from an avalanche, and whose head was then cut off and cast in steel. Obviously. American Head’s themes are less cerebral and surreal, even if there’s a distinct dreamlike quality to them.
That’s because their lyrics are partly rooted in real events and people from Coyne and Drozd’s lives. Mother Please Don’t Be Sad, for instance, puts us in the place of a teenage Wayne as he apologises to his mum for not dropping by her house… because he’s about to die in an armed robbery. For several years, Coyne worked as a cook in Long John Silver’s fast food takeaway in Oklahoma City, and they were held up several times. The most terrifying incident is recalled on this song.
I was able to think, ‘I’m gonna try to be a musician and if people don’t like it who gives a fuck!’ It’s a very powerful way to be
“So you’re 17, just thinking it’s a normal dumb summer night. Then within a second, adrenaline is flying through you, your heart’s beating out of your chest and someone’s screaming, ‘Get on the floor, motherfuckers, get on the fuckin’ floor!’ And I really did lie on the floor thinking, ‘I’m gonna die. This is the end of my life.’ I thought about my mother – I would stop by on my way to or from work and drop off my uniform there, and she’ll worry where I’m at. And I thought, ‘Oh no, the police are going to show up and say, ‘I’m sorry, he was killed in a robbery.’
“So the song is me letting her know nothing can be done, I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time… but of course, then I got to live! Which is the greatest gift you could ever have. And actually I thought anything was possible after that. It exposed me to how fucked up the world could be – but also how wonderful it can be. I think it kind of erased the insecure pettiness of being a teenager and I was able to think, ‘Fuck it! I’m gonna try to be a musician, an artist, and if people don’t like it who gives a fuck!’ Which is a very powerful way to be.”
The Flaming Lips – You n Me Sellin’ Weed [Official Video] – YouTube
Other scenarios presented on the album include semi-autobiographical visions such as At The Movies On Quaaludes, Watching The Lightbugs Glow and You N Me Sellin’ Weed, reflecting roads not fully taken by the young Coyne and Drozd, as they grew up viewing early 70s counterculture through very young eyes.
“I clearly remember when 2001: A Space Odyssey was out,” Coyne says. “A couple of years after, it was still playing in movie theatres. I remember my older brothers talking with one of their supposedly wiser druggy friends, and they all dismissed even having a job because in the future we’re just going to live in outer space and listen to The Beatles; and being eight or nine years old, I bought into that utopia!
I’d tell myself, ‘I’m not going to be some street thug and have a fist fight every day. I just wanna play music’
“But while I got more into the music, my brothers got more immersed in the drug culture side of things. The song You N Me Sellin’ Weed is about when I was 16, and everyone was smoking and doing drugs. We knew some of the more organised pot dealers, and it just seemed like this is the way we’re all gonna make money – this isn’t wrong.
“But there’s a whole other side of violence and greed and it’s horrible and destructive. Seeing the effects on some of our brothers and their friends – people dying in motorcycle accidents, put in jail, drug deals gone bad… I would say to myself, ‘I’m just not that tough; I’m not going to be some street thug and have a fist fight every day. I just wanna play music.’”
The Flaming Lips – At The Movies On Quaaludes [Official Video] – YouTube
It’s fair to say that criminality’s loss has been music’s gain, but these visions of an alternate history lend American Head a vivid nostalgic colour, and their roots in real life add emotional weight to some powerful tunes.
Coyne turns 60 in January, but shows no signs of slowing down his and The Lips’ creative output. His latest project is a plan to circumvent the current Covid restrictions on live shows in a style glimpsed in the video to this album’s lead single, Flowers Of Neptune 6, where he walked around in a giant bubble.
“We’ve been thinking about doing shows in space bubbles – Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, where the Sex Pistols once played, is a big venue we were thinking of trying. If we can’t do normal shows for the foreseeable future, could we do them with everyone in sealed bubbles?”
Inspired by their bubbled performance on The Late Show, the band trialled the idea at the Criterion in Oklahoma City in October and, at time of press, had two full concerts scheduled for December at the same venue. If anyone can pull it off, they surely can. For now, though, there seem like few better places to be than inside his uniquely inventive American head.
The Flaming Lips – Brother Eye [Live Video] – YouTube
Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.
You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.
Talking Heads: Remain In Light
(Image credit: Sire Records)
Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) Crosseyed and Painless The Great Curve Once in a Lifetime Houses in Motion Seen and Not Seen Listening Wind The Overload
Talking Heads weren’t very far behind Television when it came to the early pioneering of post-punk aesthetics, and truthfully any of their albums released before this, their fourth record, could represent the band and the history of the genre beautifully.
Remain In Light is different. It’s a truly unique album, with funk, afrobeat and early hip-hop rhythms seamlessly merging with their more abrasive art-rock ideas. It also acted as proof of the band’s ability to crossover to a more mainstream audience, giving them their first US Billboard top 20 album and a worldwide smash hit single in the iconic Once In A Lifetime.
“My favourite album is Remain In Light by Talking Heads,” comedian Bill Bailey told Classic Rock. “It’s one of those that keeps coming round and round. I was in my teens when it came out in 1980. I’d heard Once In A Lifetime and that was it, I got the album, and I’ve been playing it ever since.”
Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute.
More George Thorogood and the Destroyers – George Thorogood and the Destroyers
On the Edge – The Babys
Seconds Of Pleasure – Rockpile
Greener Postures – Snakefinger
What they said…
“Polyrhythmic, lyrically cryptic and featuring one of the most awesomely weird guitar solos of all time (Adrien Belew’s blippy genius on Born Under Punches), Remain in Light stands as David Byrne and company’s masterpiece. It’s rooted in tradition, yet it sounds delightfully futuristic – even three decades after its initial release.” (Paste)
“The album presents such a strange artistic vision, foreign to what came before but operating as though it were the culmination of a long tradition, that it seems to declare the power of weirdness itself. To be not just strange but singular, to reinvent a form in a way that you can dance to, to smuggle beer into the museum: This is the visceral thrill of art. We want to deny it on theoretical grounds, but we can’t. So we must revise our theories.” (Pitchfork)
“Remain in Light had more words than any previous Heads record, but they counted for less than ever in the sweep of the music. The album’s single, Once in a Lifetime, flopped upon release, but over the years it became an audience favourite due to a striking video, its inclusion in the band’s 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense, and its second single release (in the live version) because of its use in the 1986 movie Down and Out in Beverly Hills, when it became a minor chart entry.” (AllMusic)
What you said…
Greg Schwepe: The FM rock station I listened to during my formative music-moulding years played pretty much your standard Midwest US rock fare; Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Boston, Pink Floyd, Bob Seger, Aerosmith…you get the picture. But it seems the Program Director also had a little “new wave” streak as this same station also provided me my first listens of The Police, Gary Numan, The Pretenders, Joe Jackson, and yes…Talking Heads. And while it was Take Me To The River that I heard first, something stuck with me about the song and band even though it was not your standard “plug a Les Paul into a Marshall and crank it to 11” type music.
Fast forward a year or two and I’m at college and get involved with our little 10 watt radio station (“WUSO…89.1 commercial free…” went the tagline). I quickly learn what college/indie/alternative radio is and that most of the stuff I hear on the station or see printed on the playlists posted around campus, I’ve never even heard of. But strangely enough… I like it!
Interesting in that before MTV, the internet, and streaming, your musical tastes were shaped by the radio stations you could pick up, what records were stocked at your local record store, and what music magazines were sold at your local newsstand. I can tell you that none of these new wave/alternative bands ever graced the pages of the Circus magazines I used to buy! I show up at college and there’s a whole new world of music now available to me.
Our station had a bunch of favourite bands that the staff, DJs and campus seemed to like. Bands that pretty much got played so much that all their albums were kept in the bin right in the booth, eliminating the need for you to run back to the record library to retrieve them. And you guessed it…Talking Heads were one of those bands (and not surprisingly, the other new wave bands I listed above too). I was now aware that they had even more albums than the one Take Me To The River was on, and one of those was Remain In Light.
Right off the bat, I will call Remain In Light frenetic, busy, and with a lot going on. But somehow, not overwhelming. Sometimes you get stuff that’s “a little weird, quirky, and quiet.” The first half of this album is not quiet by any stretch of the imagination. BOOM, it rattles you right at the start. Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) certainly delivers a punch. Beats, beats, and more beats. Busy, busy, busy!
Crosseyed and Painless and The Great Curve follow with more of the same hypnotic groove that keeps you locked in. Then comes Once In a Lifetime with the memorable quotable lyrics. And once MTV came around, you got to see David Byrne do his funky dance and if this song came on during a party you were at… you’d definitely saw one or two people imitating Byrne’s moves. More catchy grooves to keep you attached during Houses In Motion.
The album finally starts to slow down a little with the hypnotic Seen and Not Seen. More repeating beats. Repeating beats. Throughout the album we are also treated to the guitar treatments of Adrian Belew (who, by no surprise became a radio station favourite once he released a solo album).
The final two tracks, Listening Wind and The Overload descend into atmospheric, slightly trippy tracks that are almost opposite bookends to the first two tracks. These final tracks are as low key as the first two are totally jacked up. Lets the listener slowly finish the album out but still stay engaged.
At the end of the day, not everything Talking Heads did is everyone’s cup of tea. The band is either “Weird and quirky, but I like them” or “Weird and quirky, and I don’t like them.” For some, David Byrne’s yips and squawks can be a little much. As I mentioned at the beginning of my review, I was surprised how much I liked Talking Heads, even with them being the total opposite of a lot of other stuff I listened to. 8 out of 10 for me on this one. The first of many college radio finds. “Wait… there’s more new stuff I can listen to?”
Mike Canoe: Let’s answer the primary question up front. Not only do I think Remain In Light is indisputably the best Talking Heads album, it’s one of the best albums by anyone ever. The first time I heard it, to paraphrase The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, my brain grew three sizes that day. It was so innovative and introduced me to things like Afrobeat and polyrhythms – even if I didn’t yet know them by name. Just as importantly, it introduced to Brian Eno in his role as producer.
It’s cliché to say that Remain In Light is an album with no bad songs on it but it’s the exception that proves the rule. It’s also cliché to say that the one hit, Once in a Lifetime, is not even the best song on the album. It’s certainly one of the best songs but an argument could be made for any of the seven others as well.
There’s the insanely danceable, The Great Curve, with its immortal lyric, “the world moves on a woman’s hips...,” the cautionary tale of Seen and Not Seen backed by a gentle humming melody, to Listening Wind, which took me a long time to realize that the titular “wind” was actually a bomb blast. Then there’s the closer, absolutely crushing in every sense of the word, The Overload. “A terrible signal…too weak to even recognize…a gentle collapsing….” Woo! Goosebumps every time.
As alluded to above, the lyrics are a big part of what I love about the album, but now the jittery paranoia found in songs like Animals or Psycho Killer were embedded in a swirling mix of funk, pop, world music, and brilliant noise. David Byrne delivers his lyrics in anything from yips to gasps to shouts to whispers and the musicianship is outstanding. It took me a lot longer to understand and appreciate the contributions of the additional musicians like Adrian Belew and Nona Hendryx but they are essential to the big sound of the album.
A final cliché to wrap things up: Never meet your heroes – or, at least, don’t learn too much about them if you want to appreciate the music unsullied. My love of Remain In Light, and the Talking Heads and Eno, in general, dimmed somewhat when I learned about the egos, power plays, and general acrimony in and around the band. It was good to listen to it again with relatively fresh years this week. It is a truly outstanding album.
John Davidson: Most of the classic rock and prog albums we review are enjoyed by a strange intersection of bikers, potheads, science geeks and old school DnD players. Talking Heads on the other hand is music for art (humanities) students.
I was surprised to see this album was released in 1980. It feels like it’s from a few years later. It tries very hard to be avant garde, with vocal and guitar loops over poly rhythmic percussion. But for the most part I just found it dull. It’s well made for sure, but it’s not for me.
Evan Sanders: Remain In Light is an amazing Talking Heads album, maybe not their best, but certainly the one where they made it clear that they were not a punk-new wave outfit. As a punk fan in the 70s and 80s, I admit I didn’t like this one at first, as it was too much world music for me rather than songs like Psycho Killer.
However, the changes in the band had been quite clear in their earlier efforts, from several of the songs on Fear of Music, e.g. I Zimbra, the gospel-tinged Take Me To The River on their second album, and more. My only complaint about Remain In Ligh, is that the album loses steam in the last three songs, which seem more like demos. Due to that, either Fear of Music or Speaking In Tongues get my vote for best Talking Heads studio album, while Stop Making Sense is my favourite overall.
Mark Herrington: In answer to the question “Is this their best album?“, it very much depends on your taste. My personal favourite is 1979’s Fear Of Music which has a darker, more hypnotic feel throughout. It feels more consistent and thematic than this.
Remain In Light has a number of stand-out classic tracks and some lesser songs – so feels less fluid to me. Even though its highlights are probably better tracks overall, it doesn’t move me and get under my skin the way Fear… does.
Peter Barron: I prefer Fear Of Music, but not by much.
Brian Carr: I never listened to much Talking Heads music – always thought they were outside the realms of what moves me. During a partial spin through Remain In Light this afternoon, it struck me as rather repetitive within each song. That said, it also struck me that, in the right mood, I might actually like it reasonably well.
Adrian Bolster: I walked into a pub in Manchester a few weeks ago, Gullivers in the Northern Quarter, and The Overload was playing on the jukebox. I knew my son had brought me to the right place. £1 for 5 tracks made the afternoon fly by! This is a masterpiece in music, not just for Talking Heads.
Mal Gilliatt: Who would have thought after a lifetime listening to hard rock and heavy metal I would later on discover Talking Heads and realise how good music could really be. Stop Talking Sense has got to be one of the greatest concert movies of all time !
Philip Qvist: I like Speaking In Tongues, I loved their live Stop Making Sense video and there is a lot that I like about Remain In Light and Little Creatures, but Talking Heads is another one of those bands where I would be more than happy to have just a Greatest Hits compilation in my collection.
Remain In Light starts off well with Born Under Punches, Crosseyed And Painless and the Great Curve, but the album sort of runs out of steam after Houses In Motion – while I still prefer the single version of Once In A Lifetime. Plenty of percussion was used on the album, while guest guitarist Adrian Belew added some nice touches on the record.
Good production work from Brian Eno (even if he seemed to have ruffled a few feathers in the Talking Heads camp), while David Byrne’s lyrics were wonderfully wacky as usual.
So all in all, a very good album but not a classic for me – and the less said about the cover, the better. It’s pretty bad in my opinion – but hey, others may like it.
Ben L. Connor: This isn’t just Talking Heads’ greatest album, it’s one of the best albums ever made by anyone. I’ve listened to this album dozens of times, and I still find myself discovering new riffs and licks buried amongst the flurry of sounds and ideas.
Gary Claydon: One of those albums that rewards repeated listening. Interesting but no masterpiece. I was a fan of Eno from his Roxy Music days. His introduction threw fuel on the previously smouldering embers of internecine strife between Byrne and his bandmates. Why is it that conflict so often heightens the creative process? Worth the price of admission for The Overload alone, Remain In Light also suffers from trying to be too clever simply for the sake of it. 7/10.
Neil Immerz: I’ll say this about the band (and I’ve wanted to for a long time) – they are not punk. Ok so they played CBGB’s back in the 70s like Blondie did, but that doesn’t make them a punk band. They are a rock/pop band. Ffs, the sex pistols and Ramones were more ‘punk’ than these guys ever could’ve been.
As for this album, Once In A Lifetime is my favourite song off it. Thats it.
Wesley Winegarden: After years of listening to the whole Talking Heads catalogue obsessively, I still put this album at #3 in the band’s recording output, behind Fear Of Music and their best album Speaking In Tongues.
Don’t get me wrong though, this is still a 5-star album, or if we’re doing ½s, a 4½ star album filled with glorious experiments in sound. I still hear new things every time I listen to it. My only gripe, and it is a tiny one, is that some of the experiments sound unfinished, especially in the latter part of the album; my brother used to say (back in the days of vinyl) that Once In A Lifetime was only put on side-two to force people to turn the album over and listen to the second side.
I tend to agree, the first four tracks on this album are amongst the best of the band’s amazing output, but the last four to me, sound like they were “works in progress” that they never finished. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the last half of the album just doesn’t work for me… Maybe, Tina, Jerry and Chris had had enough of Burns and Eno’s collective egos by then and just called it finished.
Chris Elliott: I was 14 in 1980 and this wasn’t Psycho Killer, soit passed me by. It was an album I discovered probably six years later. It’s a thing of rare beauty, and one of those records that opened my ears to a wider palette. It’s been an actual pleasure to hear again.
Final score: 8.50 (38 votes cast, total score 323)
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