Stop Making Sense is an exceptional concert film, and Stop Making Sense is a singular performance album, and it’s important to note they are not the same thing. Certainly, the raw material for both sprung from a single source, a three-night December 1983 stand by Talking Heads at the Pantages Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. From there, director Jonathan Demme’s team forged footage and music from those shows into a film as thoughtfully quirky as the band with which it partnered, while Heads member Jerry Harrison and E.T. Thorngren did a separate mix of the music optimized for album release. On the occasion of their initial appearances’ 40th anniversary, album and film alike receive celebratory reissues, with the audio side reaching what appears to be its logical conclusion with the Stop Making Sense Deluxe Edition, an August 18, 2023, digital download/two-LP set that for the first time includes all the tracks available in film and video releases along the way.
[After the Sept. 11 premiere of the restored 4K edition of the film at the Toronto International Film Festival with all four members in attendance, it will also be celebrated with a global theatrical run. Many dates are here.]
As a pieced-together, post-produced accounting of a memorable stage show, Stop Making Sense isn’t, and never was, a documentary, and that is among its strongest assets. Each production team used pieces to their target format’s specific advantage, polishing and editing as appropriate, resulting on the album side in a nine-track release that featured several performances different than were used in the film. With the audio version built out to 19 songs, those differences are still in place, the album remains its own thing, and even that is not the same experience it used to be. One thing hasn’t changed—it remains one of the best-sounding live albums ever released.
This is the second time the album has seen an expanded reissue—the first (in 1999, now able to celebrate its own 25th anniversary) featured all the tracks from the film’s theatrical cut. Where the 1984 album was a highlight reel, the Deluxe Edition (just slightly more than the 16-cut 1999 one) is a journey through the show’s entirety. It begins as it has in every version, with David Byrne solo on acoustic guitar, accompanied by the grabby, hollowed-out pulsation of a Roland TR-808 drum machine for “Psycho Killer.”
Departure from the original album’s streamlined playlist rears its head with several early additions, among them “Heaven” with Tina Weymouth joining on bass (and Lynn Mabry adding vocals from offstage), “Thank You for Sending Me an Angel” as Chris Frantz ascends his newly arrived drum kit, and “Found a Job,” with Jerry Harrison pairing his electric guitar with Byrne’s. Even without visual cues, the group’s piece-by-piece assembly is more discernible when stretched over seven songs than when it happened in three on the original release, and here the build is slow enough that it doesn’t conclude until keyboardist Bernie Worrell arrives as LP side two opens with “Burning Down the House.”
The trajectory of “Slippery People” is a reminder of how comfortable the band has been reshaping the material all along. For the original album, the LP featured a 3:35 mix of the song, while the CD/cassette version was 4:13. The Deluxe Edition version is 4:01 (as it was in 1999) and none the worse for the wear. Harrison and Thorngren once again mixed the collection, and the results are clean and manicured, yet still bursting with live energy, even in moments clearly finagled.
The Deluxe Edition goes beyond the Demme film’s contents—its song roster mirrors a 1985 home video release, which spliced into the film three additional songs. Ensuing video releases have more wisely relegated them to bonus tracks. “Cities” appears early—it’s when guitarist Alex Weir comes onstage and introduces the vocal wail with which he peppers several songs in the set.
The other two added tracks close out album side three: from Byrne’s The Catherine Wheel (also the source of “What a Day That Was” at the start of the same side) comes “Big Business,” which is paired with “I Zimbra,” the Dada-derived chug of nonsense lyrics from Fear of Music. The new additions are welcome, taken as they are from a program that had no duds.
Version-measuring and setlist scholarship aside, the core Stop Making Sense performance remains as magical as ever. There is an argument to be made for every song as an improvement on its album version. “Life During Wartime” is a propulsive hoot, “Once in a Lifetime” is relentlessly infectious, and “Girlfriend is Better” overflows with a raucous charm that translates with or without the accompanying visual of Byrne in his big suit.
Even “This Must be the Place (Naïve Melody),” so memorably plaintive on 1983’s Speaking in Tongues, sports appealing nuance in its smartly applied chorus vocals.
The Tom Tom Club extract “Genius of Love” played by the rest of the band during a Byrne costume change veers closest to a throwaway, but even that offers loopy amusement.
With its vinyl release, the Deluxe Edition includes a 28-page booklet featuring archival photos and new remembrances by all four of the band’s principals. What they have to say is frequently more analytical than anecdotal, dispassionate reflections whose clinical overtones may stem from lingering dissatisfaction: When the band split up in 1991, Byrne had no further interest in seeing it continue and everyone else was unhappy to see it end, and closure has been no easier to find in the years since. That aside, with a visual appeal different than one could get watching the film, the book is a lovely, album-appropriate addition, another element that caters to the strength of a specific format.
After 40 years, Stop Making Sense in all its forms remains ineffably compelling and still feels fully modern. With the entire roster of songs now available, perhaps all that remains is to await a 50th anniversary release, possibly an offering of the complete audio for all three of the original shows. In the meanwhile, the Deluxe Edition is a treasure, an exceptionally well-produced album capturing an irresistible show.
Related: Our Album Rewind of the Heads’ Fear of Music
