How many other bands can you think of that emerged so fully formed, so focused, so tightly wound, so ready to explode… and then went on to even greater heights? Not a note is wasted, not a lyric superfluous. The bare bones of funk, stripped and exposed, daring you to dance. Building from Tina Weymouth’s monstrous bassline on Psycho Killer and tracing its way backwards through New Feeling to the unnerving Don’t Worry About The Government, this album oozes anxiety and tension. And yet it’s so precise. David Byrne’s vocals are sharp and brittle and, in places, pure psychosis, while Chris Frantz’s drumming is so tight it rivals James Brown’s legendary JBs. Every track, every beat…
To label this “college rock” is an oversimplification, unless college students are all perpetually on the verge of a breakdown, bursting with barely contained nervous energy.
Of course it didn’t come complete. Talking Heads formed in 1975 after Byrne, Weymouth, and Frantz – three alumni from the Rhode Island School of Design – moved to New York City and joined the CBGBs scene. Their early demos included Psycho Killer, a song ‘inspired’ by the Son of Sam serial killings that gripped New York at the time. In 1976, the band expanded, bringing in guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Harrison (ex-Modern Lovers) just in time to sign with Seymour Stein’s Sire Records.
Recorded at Sundragon Studios in New York, 77 was released in September 1977, and it felt like an emotional blast carefully packed into tight, angular arrangements. It wasn’t the loudest or most aggressive of the punk-era albums, but it was perhaps the most unsettling. The band used restraint as a weapon, with silence and stillness conveying as much as the music itself.
The reissue comes as an expanded 2 x LP set or 3 x CD + Blu-ray deluxe edition complete with 80-page hardcover book written by Tina Weymouth, David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison.
The outtakes – live performances drawn from CBGBs (of course!), mighty raging debut single Love -> Building On Fire, various acoustic and alternate versions of familiar numbers – are damn near indispensable.
