Saints Alive

Wolcott's beef with sacred cows

The downtown darlings are showing signs of disarray. Laurie Anderson has dematerialized. Repeating himself, repeating himself, repeating himself, Philip Glass has added pulsating rings of static to his Saturn of sound. Only Talking Heads have avoided being calcified by self-consciousness; they've managed to maintain a warm flow through their arty poses. When they spice their musical mix with salsa, reggae, and AfroCaribbean funk, they don't come across as tourists in the Third World or white hunters on safari seeking plunder.

But as Talking Heads have achieved sacred-cow status (with David Byrne in danger of becoming a droll and cagey saint-sage-soothsayer in the John CageMerce Cunningham mode), they've taken to milking their motifs from a too precious tit. On Little Creatures and Naked, their latest effort, they cartoon the nuclear family from the perspective of school kids' crayon drawings taped to the refrigerator door, and the winsomeness has become rather wee. Naked is a fruitcocktail production aburst with tropical color (busy horns, hiccupy vocals), but the strain for significance shows. The Heads have lost the dowser's knack— they're treading sand. No one would ever accuse Talking Heads of whoring after strange gods. But they've begun to treat their pet conceits as hand-carved idols. David Byrne has been a witch doctor too long not to know that some idols are meant to be torched. Craft Talking Heads still have. It's passion that's lacking. And passion bums.

JAMES WOLCOTT