INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

New Musical Express DECEMBER 5, 1981 - by Barney Hoskyns

DAVID BYRNE: SONGS FROM THE BROADWAY PRODUCTION OF "THE CATHERINE WHEEL"

The neurotic fades to grey

David Byrne, "commissioned" to write music for Twyla Tharp Dance Foundation's Catherine Wheel seemed simultaneously the ultimate highbrow accolade and ultimate certification of him as a spent musical force. This kind of patronage by the "serious" artistic community confirmed lurking suspicions about his real musical designs.

Nothing wrong with writing for dance, no need to get paranoid, but Byrne's drift of late seemed bound to wind up in such a cosily cultural band. His songs, words, and voice have inevitably become assimilable, identifiable and predictable, and when they are seen as fitting accompaniment to expensive, minority, highbrow art, maybe there is a danger of homogenisation.

From all accounts, The Catherine Wheel was a highly imaginative production. As a kind of balletic soap opera - cast was family, maid, pet, poet, leader, and chorus - it was obviously tailor-made for Byrne's neurotic patchwork observations of domestic rigmarole - painfully diffident observation elevated by Talking Heads music as the subject of Tharp's ballet was elevated by her choreography.

As an album, however, Byrne's music unhappily reflects its incorporation into higher culture. The two polarities of Byrne's output - experimental non-vocal music and Talking Heads "Songs" - are taken to extreme but seem to have no meeting ground. Both are undone by having been encouraged, "Commissioned" to exemplify themselves.

Thus, compared to Bush Of Ghosts, the experimental stuff is a sham, while the songs are uniformly hollow reformulations of the classic Talking Heads blueprint. The instrumental tracks, which feature the likes of Brian Eno and Jerry Harrison (on vibes, Profit Scream, and Large Drum), would require some idea of their choreographic use if they were to sound like anything more than outtakes for a mid-European road movie.

On Two Soldiers, for example, Adrian Belew brews in the background while synthesisers whirl like clouds over quirky coiling bass - nothing very startling. Cloud Chamber really takes the biscuit, though: "David Byrne: Kitchen Metals; Jerry Harrison: Large Drum; Twyla Tharp: Water Pot."

As for the big songs the best, His Wife Refused is virtually a direct continuation of Once In A Lifetime while compared to some of the glories on More Songs and Fear Of Music, Big Business and What A Day That Was are cynical crystalisations of Byrne's entire intellectual position. The more sophisticated and academic his musical ideas become, the feebler his lyrics seem to get. What A Day That Was is especially full of the catchphrases which always seem to say the same thing.

Lines such as "I'm dreaming of a city / It was my own invention / And I put the wheels in motion/ A time for big decisions", verge on self-parody.

I find Byrne's voice now inescapably grating and wonder whether his musical career shouldn't henceforth be confined to such respectable ventures. Songs From "The Catherine Wheel", although featuring some highly competent musicians - Yogi Horton's drumming is outstanding - suggests that David Byrne's particular strength is fading out of his own reach.

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