Talking Heads

Everyone's favorite concert movie is also a fine document of a group at the pinnacle of their form. Where the band's studio albums capture their darkness and frenetic energy, this portrait is one for the masses: full-color and glossy. Mainstream acceptance rarely sounded so vital.

This is the second live album that Talking Heads have released (the third, actually, if you
count a to-the-trade-only 1979 LP). But while The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads was
an ambitious attempt to sum up their career-long evolution from pop minimalists to preppie
funkateers, Stop Making Sense assays a simpler task: to capture America's best band – I said
it, you didn't – at their peak. Unlike the film of the same name, the album doesn't... More >

Always skeptical of live albums, I note that this is their second in a four-year period that has netted only one studio job while establishing them as a world-class live band. Number one was a useful overview; number two is a soundtrack, albeit for the finest concert film I've ever seen, that repeats three songs from the overview and four from the studio job. Buy the video. (Grade - B+)