Cross eyed And Painless. Talking Heads. 1980. Sire.

 Have we ever really caught up with Talking Heads? Remain In Light, and its delphic sibling, Speaking In Tongues, have been narrating a dual adventure in world and American myth and prophecy since, respectively, 1980 and 1983. Both records are a layered profusion of ideas that by design resist self-referring cohesion; instead of making a direct appeal to listeners’ emotions, the songs invite objectivity and skepticism, those blunt instruments of intelligence that interpret reality’s countless details. Because global concepts are in an unstoppable state of flux, always changing, the songs themselves are always changing, too, not simply because individual listeners have matured or declined into new perspectives but because the facts of the world are irremediably altered with each passing moment, thus regenerating context and resonance. Late on Remain In Light’s second side, David Byrne recites the lyric, “He has the knowledge of the wind to guide him on,” a reiteration of the side one lyric, “Facts are nothing on the face of things.” That line, maxim of our new, data driven century, has riven human lives since cognition first taught us to dissemble. It’s delivered from Crosseyed and Painless, a rhythmic track so spookily omniscient as to feel strangely imbued with the power of surveillance. While watching you, the song more than just normalizes paranoia and anxiety; it also advances the funk and rock tradition of foregrounding the percussive component of the song—here played live—creating a dynamism fraught with musical tensions, often associated with punk, that happily subvert FM radio conventions into a more contemporaneous, and less escapist, experience—a stated goal shared also by rap’s founding artists. Shot through with Adrian Belew’s virtuoso soloing, giving expression to Byrne’s observations, “Working by hindsight. Got the message from the oxygen,” Crosseyed and Painless is a collaborative triumph that harnesses the global energies of apprehension and distrust, creating music from, and for, the dangerously overrun population vectors at society’s extremes. Data is the new air.

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