8. Naked (1988)

While I waited for the G train a couple nights ago, I was listening to Naked on my phone. I walked to an available seat at a bench, passing a group of buskers, and sat down. They piped up, swaying back and forth behind a pretty standard subway setup, and my neighbors without headphones winced. It’s pretty rare that these performances are good, much less stunning; if the performers don’t appear to be unusual in some way, I often leave the headphones in and opt to tune out. But this time, the music in my headphones seemed to swell as the band played. I wanted to check how far I’d gotten into Naked, so I took out my phone and inadvertently paused the music. But “The Democratic Circus” continued to play. I looked up and realized my mistake — I was listening to the three-piece Appalachian subway ensemble, unconvincingly patting a brushed snare drum alongside too-clean guitars. Talking Heads had stopped playing. 

But perhaps they had stopped in 1988, when David Byrne opted to hire a veritable rolodex of “world” musicians and sidemen to lay down everything form kora to alto sax on Naked. Gone are the textures and smells of SoHo and the unmistakable ears of an artist-producer at the mixing board. And in their stead, there is no distilled wisdom from the band’s past. The experiments in popular-form-as-artistry, which dominated the two preceding records, have paled. At best, we have a saccharine, heavy-handed facsimile of a pop record, the seductive “Mr. Jones” and “Ruby Dear” standing out as classics, performed by a (perhaps surprisingly good) subway band.