Stop Making Sense

The Talking Heads concert film STOP MAKING SENSE, recorded at a 1983 Hollywood performance, brought audiences everywhere face to face with the very visual aesthetic of conceptual artiste David Byrne and his cohorts. Playing the part of performance artist, Byrne used elaborate visual gimmicks to enhance the themes of his songs for maximum visceral impact. Serendipitously, STOP MAKING SENSE captured the band at an artistic peak, as it consists mostly of material from the glorious funk-inspired albums REMAIN IN LIGHT and SPEAKING IN TONGUES. Live, complemented by a phalanx of great auxiliary musicians, the Heads emphasise the funkier aspects of their jumpy art-dance concepts, and tunes like "Burning Down the House" and "Girlfriend is Better", already impressive in their studio versions, seem to jump off the album.

Q (1/00, p.87)
- Included in Q Magazine's "50 Best Albums of 1999."

Entertainment Weekly (10/12/01, p.42)
- Ranked #79 in EW's "100 Best Movie Soundtracks" - "...The Heads at their idiosyncratic, syncopated best..."

Rolling Stone (11/25/99, pp.99-100)
- 4 stars out of 5 - "...shows the Heads punk-funkin' with their signature mix of giddiness and anxiety until the tension busts wide open on the exuberant aerobics workouts that defined the show....at the height of [their] powers...sound even better the second time around."

Q (10/99, p.144)
- 5 stars out of 5 - "...in terms of its concept and execution, STOP MAKING SENSE went further than any other document of a band onstage....proved that a scratchy Rhode Island art rock band could stage as damn funky a revue as James Brown, Sly Stone, George Clinton or Prince."

Mojo (10/99, p.102)
- "...The new sequence allows for a smoother development....[allows] Byrne to take advantage of the huge advances in analog/digital conversion over the last decade....adding greater ambient 'warmth' to the album in general..."