The Listomania I make the lists, you shoot them down. Quid Pro Quo.

137. David Byrne and Brian Eno – Strange Overtones

Sometimes, I judge shit without listening to it. Yeah, I said it. We all do it. I’m not saying I would represent like I had heard something I hadn’t. But sometimes I will hesitate to listen to music based on what I assume it sounds like.

What a massive mistake that was with this song. I had listened to Byrne and Eno’s other work, like My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and I knew a good amount of Talking Heads (Remain in Light, best album of the 80’s? Close.) But judging on that previous material, I came really late to the jam on this single from their 2008 collaboration Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. I thought, it’s either going to be a lame TH recreation and make me regret not being alive and in New York and on drugs in 1980, or it’s going to be, uh, kind of boring and a little weirdly religious. So, so wrong. Well, not on the weird religion thing so much.

“Strange Overtones” is a neo-gospel boogie that shatters expectations. Starting out with a bounce that evokes images of the Fantasia ballet hippos and the kind of trampolines that are guaranteed to break your leg in a neighbor kid's backyard, the song grooves lighter than anything this side of, well, groovier Talking Heads material. David Byrne’s falsetto floats over bubblegum bass and fluttering synth strings, testifying to a brand new audience - a congregation of indie kids with hair in their eyes and Deerhunter in their iPods. Backed by mile-high piles of Byrne’s voice and Eno’s electronics equipment, “Strange Overtones” reaches gospel heights unheard of for Byrne and Eno’s previous work and injects the contemporary alternative landscape with a dose of much needed old school, old guy soul. Getting to it a few months earlier might’ve been nice.