What Are You Afraid Of,5 Out Of 5 Stars
Kicking off with the celebratory "I Zimbra" and closing with the haunting spaciness of "Drugs," "Fear Of Music" was the first album where Talking Heads managed to mix all their influences for the first time as a whole. The funkiness that seemed buried under the surface of the previous two albums comes to fruition on the classic "Life During Wartime," and the experiments that just seemed like art-school JO came into musical fullness. This was the Talking Heads' ode to New York City, and it still holds as one of their finest albums.
There's a lot of rumbling claustrophobia ("Cities") wonder at the outside world ("Animals") and general anxiety ("Memories Can't Wait," "Heaven.") I always thought that this was the album where David Byrne stopped thinking about inner city paranoia and actually statrted seeing bodies dangling from hooks on the walls; hence his fear of "Air" and dread of "Life During Wartime." Even with Byrne's more pointed mindset, this would be for nothing if the rest of the band wasn't pulling their weight. Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz score points for their rhythm chops. It is their propulsion that takes "Wartime" and "I Zimbra" into dance turf, and Jerry Harrison's guitar and keyboards add the the enigmatic swirl.
This is obviously a bridge album given how the danceable throb of muscle that was "Fear Of Music" would ultimately give way the the polyrhythms of "Remain In Light" (and the Byrne/Eno project "My Life In The Bush of Ghosts"). But for this moment, the Talking Heads took their NYC Arthouse Groove and served it up to a mainstream audience in the quirkiest form of anxiety ridden pop. Next to the friendly accessibility of "Little Creatures," my favorite Talking Heads album.
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