Little Creatures (Rocktober 23)

Having spent the early ’80s in a giddy expansion of the sound and scale of their studio recordings and concerts, Talking Heads come full circle with this 1985 album, retracting to the core quartet and restoring a focus on David Byrne’s knotty songs. arriving in the wake of the fevered rhythms of Speaking in Tongues and Stop Making Sense, Little Creatures’s new material sounds freshly lyrical, remarkably concise, even subdued, but there’s the usual whimsy – the levitating heroine of the jangling, punchy opener, ‘And She Was,’ the cracked child-rearing advice of ‘Stay up Late,’ and the galloping, anthemic reminder that we’re on the ‘Road to Nowhere.’