Wet Dishes

THEY SAY A BOOK can't be judged by its cover, but they never mentioned anything about record album covers. Infact, aside from playing a key role in selling the vinyl, albumn covers have the double duty of tipping off the tone of the record's content.

The Talking Heads latest albumn, Little Creatures, is no exception. The back cover displays the group's members standing in militant poses, chests out and chins up. Ironically, their cold stances are juxtaposed with their downbeat, paisley-covered clothing. Conveying an air of easy-going neurosis, the Heads' back cover hints at a mixture of a flower child's mellowness and tense creativity.

Unfortunately, for those who prefer an anxious Talking Heads, the music does not live up to the cover's signal and the mellowness takes precedent in Little Creatures. Most of the lyrics and melodies lack the unpredictability of the earlier Heads. Images of David Byrne bursting with tension and racing on cocaine won't flash through your mind on this one. This is relaxing music and sounds most like stuff you dry the dishes to.

Behind the comfortable listening, the lyrics satirize suburban domesticity, grope tiredly for utopia and present existential dilemnas without the Sartreian seriousness.

Some of these songs may strike Heads fans as mainstream yuk. Guitars mush with drums which further meld into Byrne's vocals. No instrument stands out enough to give the songs the usual simplicity that demands concentration. Resembling a collection of Bruce Springsteen tunes, most of these songs can only be differentiated by their lyrics.

If anything, the mellow sounds and slow pace of the Heads latest--which evokes memories of their early albums--will appeal most to an unlikely combination of hard-core devotees and mainstream audiences.

BYRNE'S ABILITY TO be silly without going overboard is one of his strengths. But except for a few satirical lines and a limited amount of pigsnorting during "Stay Up Late," Byrne stays well within the bounds of controlled wildness.

Can it be that the Talking Heads, a band which led a pack of subculturists in the 1970's, have heaved themselves into the mashed potatoes of popular music? Probably not. Despite indications of falling into the ever-increasing heap of commercial rock, the Talking Heads are far from doing so.

The Heads put forward some experimentation. The Western beat in "Creatures of Love" and the gospel-like beginning of "Road to Nowhere" are two examples. Even a smidgen of Far Eastern jingles start off "The Lady Don't Mind." The risks they take here, however, are not nearly as daring as their extensive work with African music several years ago. No keys to the avant-garde will be issued here.

Probably the boldest and most subtle experiment in the latest album is with popular music itself. As Spinal Tap showed, mimicking bad rock is the best way to criticize it. Likewise, the songs Little Creatures dip into the sounds and dull themes of pop music, but carefully refrain from making the complete dive. Instead they go just far enough to poke fun at the music during the journey. The chance they take, nonetheless, is a big one, considering they are dealing with a genre they usually take no interest in. This sort of dialectic-bashing implies an experiment that is not quite apparent during the first listen.

In "Stay Up Late," the album's most tersely phrased song domestic life--something new for a band known for shying away from such stable themes--has invaded the lyrics. "Stay Up Late" is about playing with a little kid: watching him drinks, crawl across a floor and wear a little red suit.

Sound pretty homey? Maybe at first, but the message comes across a few lines later when they describe the kids as "little playthings" for the parents. Even some subversion makes its way into the conservative household. These are no ordinary parents. After they've forced the child to stay up way beyond his bedtime they decide to coax him out of bed despite the late hours. After all, he is just a little plaything.

In "Television Man," Byrne has even become a T.V. junkie. He satirizes boob tube addicts by explaining that even soap opera fantasies are fine with him because he and T.V. "are just good friends." It becomes evident, nonetheless, that a real T.V. man would never admit to being one.

Fans of Tina Weymouth can expect a lot of her voice in background vocals. The album even has a front cover that is a grafftti-filled painting by the Rev. Howard Finster. Borrowed from Tom Tom Club art, the front cover does not give as many hints to the record's content as the back cover. But it can make some good reading while you're mellowing out to Little Creatures, and it just might slow up the realization that these tunes probably are not dry enough to wipe wet dishes.