Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues

Artist - Talking Heads

Title - Speaking in Tongues

Format - 180-Gram Vinyl LP

Label - Rhino Records

2013 Reissue

 Lacquers cut from the original analog 2-tracks By Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering

The Heads released Speaking in Tongues, the first album of new material in three years, in 1983. It was their highest-charting album ever (Number 15, 1983) and yielded their biggest hit single, "Burning Down the House" (Number Nine, 1983), which was also featured in an eye-catching video that MTV had in heavy rotation.

They toured with an expanded band including Alex Weir, a guitarist with the Brothers Johnson. The tour was documented in the acclaimed movie Stop Making Sense, directed by Jonathan Demme. The soundtrack (Number 41, 1984) spent nearly two years on the pop albums chart. –Rolling Stone

Ten backup singers and musicians accompanied the original quartet, but somehow the sound was more spacious, and the music admitted aspects of the gospel, notably in the call-and-response of "Slippery People," and John Lee Hooker-style blues, on "Swamp." As usual, David Byrne determinedly sang and chanted impressionistic, nonlinear lyrics, sometimes by mix-and-matching clichés ("No visible means of support and you have not seen nothin' yet," he declared on "Burning Down the House," the Heads first Top Ten hit), and the songs' very lack of clear meaning was itself a lyrical subject.