Love This Giant
This unexpected pairing of former Talking Heads leader David Byrne and St. Vincent (a.k.a. Annie Clark) is made all the more unusual by its elaborate process. Very little time was spent head to head in the studio; rather, over three years the duo composed songs via email and by Logic software. Four instrumentalists (Tony Finno, Lenny Pickett, Kelly Pratt, and Ken Thomson) crafted the elaborate horn parts that dominate the album and bring out the songs\' baroque effects. Byrne and Clark alternate lead vocals and support one another when necessary. Clark\'s guitar explorations are seriously curtailed, while Byrne\'s eclectic world beat (on drum machines) and bizarre, detached polemics feel comfortably familiar. He\'s been exploring his remote relationship with the world since his earliest days with Talking Heads. \"I Am an Ape\" and \"The Forest Awakes,\" like many of the album\'s best tracks, sound as if they\'ve wandered into a mutant avant-garde rock opera.
This collaboration between David Byrne and St. Vincent's Annie Clark is largely concerned with human transformation. On the surface, these two have quite a few commonalities, but collaborations aren't always as simple as pairing two smart artists cut from the same cloth.
David Byrne briefly considered calling Talking Heads “The Autistics,” which would’ve been apt, given how Byrne’s lyrics and attitude have always had a certain intellectual and emotional remove—as though he were an outsider, observing the curious ways of the hu-men. That’s why it makes so much sense for Byrne to…
The product of two of indie-rock's more enquiring minds, we can only hope that this brass-led Byrne/Clark collaboration is more than a one-off experiment.
These things always seem like such a good idea on paper, don’t they? A collaboration between two iconoclasts who—though…
It's not surprising that David Byrne and St. Vincent's Annie Clark were drawn to work together.
Annie Clark, aka St Vincent's latest project is a collaborative work with David Byrne, in many ways the elder statesman of modern avant-garde pop. The results are a mixed bag; instrumentation is very traditional, and heavily reliant on a tight horn section, pushed right to the fore. Clark's voice is a measured counterpoint to Byrne's – on opener Who, and Lazarus, they trade lines and harmonise for each other, and the result is an engaging musical conversation.
True pop genius David Byrne and angelic she-devil Annie Clarke of St Vincent fame form a pretty heavenly and symbiotic match.
One has to wonder if Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) felt a little in awe of David Byrne, if it was never in the plans for this record to be a 50/50 partnership,
It’s instantly apparent that this is far from an amusing vanity project but rather a candid creative dialogue between serious if jovial musicians.
David Byrne and Annie Clark's first fruitful, brass-backed collaboration will, with luck, not be their last, writes <strong>Hermione Hoby</strong>
Love This Giant has its share of promising elements, but as a collaborative project, it’s far less than the sum of its two parts.
All the best male-female pop collaborations contain a hint of romance, and David Byrne's album with Annie Clark follows that rule, writes <strong>Maddy Costa</strong>
New writing partnership triggers startling renaissance from Talking Head. CD review by Joe Muggs