David Byrne, Feelings

It wasn't until his self-titled album in 1994 that I really gave David Byrne sans Talking Heads a chance. His ventures into Latin music had never really intrigued me, but that eponymous disc was so vibrant, and it really rocked in places, and the Latin strains that had made it into some of the songs were subtle and never gratuitous. It was gratifying to hear Byrne pick up a guitar again and do what he's always done best: intelligent, often poignant pop songs that make you smirk and tap your feet. This trend continued, happily, with Feelings, which found Byrne cultivating another batch of pop songs, collaborating with Mark Mothersbaugh and Morcheeba, and injecting ample doses of the electronica craze that was sweeping the nation in the summer of 1997. Fortunately, the dub beats and trip-hop shuffles here are neither forced nor dated, and the strongest tracks are still firmly rooted in Byrne's whimsical but ultimately profound pop songwriting genius.

I purchased this album at a Border's in Traverse City, Michigan, during one of the many hedonistic 24-hour vacations I had from the summer camp where I was a counselor. Two other counselors had accompanied me on this day off, and we'd made a bee line for TC and a cheap motel room where we drank a case of beer and watched MTV. At some point in there I got this album. "He's a genius, you know," I said to them in the car later, unwrapping the CD and its ingenius packaging that turned the disc's trayholder into a mood ring of sorts. You were supposed to spin the CD, on which a large red arrow had been printed, and wherever it stopped and indicated a feeling on the trayholder, that was how David Byrne was feeling at that precise moment (I never actually did this, since it seemed like a surefire way to scratch the CD). The tracklist was also coded with various emotions that ran the spectrum, but I'm not sure how close the correspondence actually was.

To be sure, these songs run the gamut from bubbly and playful to morose and sinister, though none of them are really ponderous affairs. "Fuzzy Freaky" was the perfect song for those lackadaisical afternoons in my cabin when I'd sneak a quick nap after lunch and before the campers started their goddamn afternoon activity. "A Soft Seduction" is a rare gentle moment when the simple strummed guitar chords and soft organ speak of the clandestine, nocturnal rituals to which we all submit. "Dance On Vaseline" zooms from the macro to the micro and back again, dismantling the personal politics of divorce and the global politics of terrorism within a single verse. Some songs don't work as well as others�"The Gates Of Paradise" is a clumsy mashup between rockabilly and drum-&-bass that's still charming for its eclecticism, much like the hoedown-with-tabla freakout of "Daddy Go Down". Both "Amnesia" and "You Don't Know Me" lull the listener with guitar and vibraphone drenched in reverb and tremolo. Towards the end of the album, Byrne returns to the subject he handles most deftly�sexual politics�for "The Civil Wars", and "They Are In Love"�addressing the seemingly irreconcilable transgressions lovers make against each other, and the possible consequences they may hold for civilization at large.

This macro/micro dichotomy is perhaps best realized in "Miss America", the album's unmistakable single, which envisions the United States as a destructive slut the narrator is powerless to resist�a fruitless romance best summarized in the song�s Spanish breakdown: Yo siempre he confiado en ti, por que me tratas asi? (�I have always trusted you; why do you treat me like this?�) This song stayed with me throughout that summer as I developed an unhealthy fondness for a fellow counselor, a crush which never really came to fruition due to her flighty aloofness, and whose futility only served to validate my hopeless romantic's drama�or so I thought at the time. After the final chorus of �Miss America�, Byrne launches into a free-form, wordless vocal melody and is joined by Paula Cole's harmonies for a plaintive rideout on timbales, horns and piano, epitomizing the genre-melding genius for which he's become known�and also serving as an apt metaphor for my silly unrequited crush: sweet but hopeless, strident but juvenile, and always just out of reach, disappearing with the fadeout.

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