Album of the Month #1

After debating over it for some time, I’ve decided to start a blog on my website. It will work as a slight extension of my social media and mailing list, starting with an album of the month. This month it’s Talking Heads’ classic Speaking in Tounges.

After watching their 1984 seminal concert film Stop Making Sense recently, I delved back into Talking Heads’ back catalogue. In recent years I’ve grown to realise they are probably one of my favourite bands and their futuristic mix of new-wave and funk was really ahead of their time. Their 5th album, Speaking in Tongues, is a personal favourite, and has some of the most well-known songs, such as “Burning Down the House” and “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody).” If you’re not yet aware of the band, I thoroughly recommend checking out either this album or their self-titled debut.

Effects used:

(Well, this wouldn’t be a guitar pedals blog without a mention of what guitar effects are used on the album, would it?) Across Talking Heads’ back catalogue and on this album in particular, you’ll hear:

• Chorus

• Delay

• Phaser

• Compression

The guitar sounds are mostly very clean with the odd overdriven sound to allow room for the synths, the keyboards and the thick rhythm section. Tina Weymouth is one of the best bass players of all time and I will not hear anything otherwise! That’s not to say there aren’t any guitar moves on the record – they’re more in the background to add the sonic palette of the music.

From what I remember reading about that era of Talking Heads, the band had started recording long jams and then piecing together the songs from those recordings – be it by muting certain parts or forming the songs by editing the recordings (which in this case was by manually splicing the magnetic tape together). Then they wrote the songs from there, which, even nowadays, is an interesting approach.