This is where people start bailing on the Heads. Listening to this completely blind (deaf?) you wouldn’t even know it was them if it weren’t for David Byrne’s highly distinctive voice, because Little Creatures is the most stylistically dramatic departure that you’ll find in their whole catalog: pop-oriented, lush, mellow, optimistic, innocuous, and most of all relaxed. Riding off the wave of their Speaking in Tongues mainstream commercial breakthrough, the Heads ditched quirky African beats, endless rhythmic drone exercises, and paranoid stream-of-consciousness nonsense lyrics for textbook pop song structures and relatively direct, straightforward lyrics. And you know what? They succeeded! This is a good album.

I wasn’t sold on it right away either, so I can understand why certain people would think about Little Creatures the way they do. This isn’t the Talking Heads that the fans knew and loved. The overall sound was way, way too different. In some ways it seemed like the band sold out, that they gave in to current trends, that they willingly acquiesced to the expectations of the masses and the demands of cultural shifts in order to maintain relevancy, that they weren’t doing what they wanted to do anymore. Maybe. But I can make a pretty strong case against all this with an overwrought and labored two-point bullet-point section:

Little Creatures was recorded in late 1984/early 1985. The chart toppers during this time period were, among others, “Shout” by Tears for Fears, “Take on Me” by A-ha, “You Spin Me Round” by who-the-fuck-knows…see what I mean here? The mid-’80s were a mechanized synthpop nightmare, and Little Creatures is anything but. Of course some of the mastering brings out some artificial coldness to Chris Frantz’s very real drumset at times, but no alternative post-punk band in America or in the UK was ditching their roots and making music that sounded like this in 1985. Usually, in an effort to “shift direction”, bands of the same genre would tend to either mellow out and pump out some embarrassing new wave balladry (while staying firmly rooted in synth Hell) or they will transition into full-on dance rockers (while staying firmly rooted in synth Hell). Talking Heads didn’t do either, they sort of morphed into an ’80s roots rock outfit like Dire Straits and developed a warm and cozy good ol’ American pop album. I guess what I’m saying is, if the Heads sold out then they didn’t do it correctly. In this case I interpret cries of “selling out” to only mean “making easy music for the common listener”. Fine, as long as we’ve pinpointed the real gripe. On to my next point, then.

This music is still fuckin’ weird, you guys. Artsy intellectuals like Byrne and Co. are simply incapable of true banality, try as they might. For all of their songwriting efforts to make a simple album of simple, catchy tunes, with lyrical subject matter that attempts to cover universal pop clichés like love and sex, there are plenty of musical decisions throughout that come across as non-conventional. Hell, Byrne still employs a lot of his odd vocal tics on most, if not all, of these songs. Not to mention the bizarre intertwining of new wave and country music on a couple of tracks (complete with steel guitar) and unironic employment of accordion on “Road to Nowhere”. And calling the lyrics “straightforward” gives them too much (or too little?) credit anyway. We’ll get into that later. But this ain’t no early-Beatles record, either. The whole package is just strange enough to put some people off if they’re paying enough attention. That isn’t to say that these people shouldn’t just swear off music altogether if this stuff is too quirky for their sensibilities. I mean, Jesus.

The long and short of it is this: Talking Heads fans are pissed that Talking Heads blatantly do not sound like Talking Heads anymore! They sound like wimpy pussies! I say go cry me a “Take Me to the River” about it. Ha! God forbid that a band DOESN’T want to make the same album thirteen times in a row *coughAC/DCcough*. But hold the phone, these people are also conveniently forgetting how unassuming and wimpy their debut Talking Heads: 77 sounded, too. In fact, that album is arguably more wimpy than this one. That one is all shy and reserved about it, too! At least on Little Creatures the band is unmistakably more assertive and confident about their pop attitude. To me, it’s still more evidence against the “sellout” accusations. You can’t suddenly sell out if what you’re doing is already what you sort of did it before anyone knew who you were eight years ago. Bah. Anyway, enough of this, let’s talk about the goddamn songs.

“And She Was”, the very first track, is already a great example of lyrical weirdness. Clearly the titular woman, the “she”, is on drugs, so at least the song isn’t so obtuse that you’d have to read an interpretation to understand it (“The world was moving, she was right there with it, and she was/The world was moving, she was floating above it, and she was“), but then Byrne has to ruin the poetry with his over-literal bean counter style that he’s been happily exercising since Album One (“And she was looking at herself/And things were looking like a movie/She had a pleasant elevation/She’s moving out in all directions“). Only David fuckin’ Byrne could some up with a lyric like “She had a pleasant elevation” without a shred of sarcasm, God bless him. But step away from the lyrics a moment and soak in the overall positive mood. It’s all major chords, man. No tension. No panic attacks. Maybe that’s not a good thing? Maybe the seasoned Heads fan prefers the tension? I know I do. But that’s not the point, the point is that the Heads are capable of branching out and succeeding at it! Fuck them forever for their bottomless well of talent.

And it continues with “Give Me Back My Name”, which is just as lyrically strange and indirect as any other Heads song from the days of yore. The music is downright cozy and pleasant, evoking thoughts of a placid summertime afternoon, but Byrne’s delivery is unsettling and ominous, and the words speak of an abstract notion of losing one’s identity. That’s just my interpretation, you can find many more interpretations online that speak of Malcolm X or Taoism. Once again, objective proof that I can’t agree fully with the “direct and straightforward” lyrics criticism. Take Byrne’s singing on this track, stick it on top of some angular and panicked rhythm guitar, and you have a song that wouldn’t sound out of place on Fear of Music both musically and thematically.

And I could keep going down the list, citing each track and explaining why each one is an example of maturity and progress from a very comfortable rock band who still puts the due effort into their work. My personal sleeper favorite is “Stay Up Late”, which has one of the catchiest choruses that they’ve ever written and subject matter that Byrne was still young enough at this point to sing about without coming across as a total creep. “Television Man” and “Road to Nowhere” are a one-two punch of incredibly strong tracks to close out the album. “Television Man” breaks the 6-minute mark with a funky (well…white-boy ’80s funky), extended, syncopated, feelgood rhythmic jam section in the middle and there’s not a second of wasted time. “Road to Nowhere” is my pick for the best album closer in the Talking Heads studio discography with its male/female a cappella introductory declaration, its bombastic snare drum lead-in, its infectious, jubilantly chugging progression, and its brilliant use of the aforementioned accordion to create an expanse of warm, welcoming sound. It’s hard for me to believe that these experts in claustrophobia are able to create a song with a depressing message (that we live, we die, and that’s all there is to it, basically) and spin it in way to make it genuinely optimistic and restrained in hokey spiritual bullshit (so enjoy it all while it lasts!). And positively danceable! You won’t even notice that the song is kind of depressing, that accordion is killing it!

The other songs take some time to grow on you. “Creatures of Love” is a corny and awkward song about sex that is presented in that autistic David Byrne fashion that only he could achieve. “The Lady Don’t Mind”, “Perfect World”, and “Walk it Down” can be interchangeable on any given day, and serve mainly to me as cute, simple filler tunes to further round out the album’s consistency. You won’t hate the songs, but you won’t love them either, and this may be one of Little Creatures‘ most unforgivable of crimes to some fans. I say fuck off to this, yet again, because Talking Heads: 77, More Songs About Buildings and Food, and Speaking in Tongues all have far more filler than Little Creatures.

If nothing else, take “Road to Nowhere” as shining of example of the Heads going against nearly everything that they’re known for, possibly going against their instincts at this point in their career, and coming out on top anyway. The band is shifting their way toward normalcy and embracing every bit of it. Could’ve fooled the best of us forever if it weren’t for the next record. True Stories still isn’t as bad as everyone says, but Little Creatures was undoubtedly all they really had in ’em when it came to this new approach. I guess in the end they are just too weird to be too normal. Hey, 1985 was one of the worst years in modern music history, at least Little Creatures helped bump the average up.

Man, I just read through all this and I’m awfully defensive, aren’t I? I take it all back. This album blows chunks!