A Few Words About the Talking Heads

I was just listening to the Talking Heads' utterly transcendent cover of Al Green's "Take Me to the River", and it dawned on me that the true genius of the Talking Heads is in their remarkable transparency. Which is not to say that they are without substance, they are,in fact, quite substantial. I mean transparency in the sense that they seem to actively eschew any form of musical obfuscation. They not only create great works of art, but they create those works in a way that allows the observer to see (or hear) exactly how that work of art was made. All the pieces of the whole are easily distinguished and identifiable, yet the whole itself is never diminished by this fact. They somehow manage to produce work which is perfectly seamless while simultaneously showing you every seam.