Responsible for indie hits like Midsommar, Moonlight and Everything Everywhere All at Once, American film company A24 has created a vast lifestyle brand around its cultish reputation, flogging everything from branded shorts ($48) to a Hereditary gingerbread kit ($62). Now, following its rerelease of Jonathan Demme’s seminal Talking Heads documentary Stop Making Sense, its tie-in merch includes a tribute album, featuring all 16 tracks from the film’s soundtrack covered by appropriately vogueish musicians.
The tracks largely use one of two distinct approaches. The acts choosing a karaoke-esque run-through include Toro y Moi (Genius of Love), the National (Heaven) and Paramore, whose faithful version of Burning Down the House includes a barnstorming vocal from Hayley Williams, but isn’t particularly compelling.
The attempts at reimagining the songs feel wildly disconnected from the source material. DJ Tunez turns the itchy paranoia of Life During Wartime into bizarrely laid-back jazz, Miley Cyrus’s lifeless version of Psycho Killer features an inexplicable lyric change (“Psycho killer / Gonna love you forever”) and Kevin Abstract somehow transforms Once In a Lifetime into a tuneless dirge. The overwhelming feeling is of leftover bits of production being put to use.
There are a few exceptions: Lorde’s Take Me to the River and the Linda Lindas’ Found a Job are at least spirited and fun, and Argentinian band El Mato a un Policia Motorizado’s Spanish-language take on Slippery People is slickly enigmatic. But even these are mildly diverting at best. It feels telling that the LP is listed as a “collectible” on A24’s website: Stop Making Sense is one of the most miraculous works of art of the 1980s, but Everyone’s Getting Involved is just content.
