Description
The Talking Animals is the fourth full-length album by the American singer, songwriter, and producer T-Bone Burnett, released on CBS Records in the UK in 1987, and on Columbia Records in the US the following year. The album was recorded by Tchad Blake at Sunset Sound and Sunset Sound Factory in Hollywood, California; with David Rhodes and T Bone Burnett producing.
There’s an old joke you can still occasionally find scrawled on the bathrooms walls of certain barrooms and theological seminaries. It starts off with “God is dead”, signed “Nitzsche” written in one pen; but another pen has crossed that out and replaced it with this truism: “Nitzshe is dead,” signed of course, by “God.”
T Bone Burnett ends his new album with a similar punchline that caps a song called «The Strange Case of Frank Cash» (co-written with Tonio K.) – a bizarre Rod Serling-style fantasy parable, featuring the fictional Frank Cash as a ne’er-do-well and Burnett himself entering the narrative and (symbolically) playing God. The Cash-vs.-Burnett struggle wittily echoes the man-vs.-God struggle as Cash blames the song’s creator, Burnett, for his problems, and then professes atheism: “I don’t believe in him. In fact, I don’t even think he exists, and not only that, but this song is over.” The joke is that the song isn’t over, of course, as omnipotent songwriter Burnett proceeds to ignore Cash’s foolish protestations of disbelief.
That Burnett has mercy on his main character is predictable, considering that much of ‘The Talking Animals’ is about God’s mercy. The opening song, «The Wild Truth», even has a spoken-word interlude on the subject that Burnett has adapted almost verbatim from the writings of Catholic thinker Thomas Merton: “Are we supposed to take all this greed and fear and hatred seriously? It’s like watching dust settle. It never changes. It’s too consistent. Mercy is not consistent. It’s like the wind. It goes where it will. Mercy is comic, and it’s the only thing worth taking seriously.”
‘The Talking Animals’, like the Merton/Burnett concept of humorously unpredictable mercy, is highly comic and worth taking seriously. Utterly brilliant, too, and extremely Christian in its concepts. The name of God is never mentioned – kind of like in early Jewish history – but the aforementioned opening and closing songs reek with theology for those who have ears to hear, as does the album’s midpoint song, «Relentless», which offers a more straightforward sense of helpless devotion (“This mercy convulses by pride/ I find you wherever I hide/ I have got nothing to win/ And so I give in”).
One might also be able to dig up a few Scriptures to confirm the message of the brooding «Purple Heart» (movingly co-written and co-sung by U2‘s Bono), which is not just about the importance of sacrifice, but about how unrighteous it is to wear your sacrifice on your sleeve.
Miss the theology and you miss half the album, which is why some critics (and some literal-minded Christians) won’t get it. Other critics and old-time Burnett fans won’t like it because it’s such a musical departure, eschewing his famous “rootsy” stylings for an amazingly contemporary rock sound. T Bone vocally sounds a little like John Lennon, as usual, and his guitarist and co-producer, David Rhodes, is Peter Gabriel’s frequent collaborator, so ‘The Talking Animals’ ends up sounding like a cross between ‘Abbey Road’ and ‘So’ at times. (Occasionally the sonic references get rather obvious: «Monkey Dance» is «Come Together» redux, and in «Relentless», Burnett steals from himself with a guitar riff that’s a dead ringer for the one he played at the beginning of Leslie Phillips’ «Beating Heart».)
No doubt, this is a less overtly “personal” album for Burnett than some of his simpler, rootsier albums (like Truth Decay and the country-ish T Bone Burnett): words like “literary” and “difficult” more easily spring to mind. But what could be impersonal about music that is so much about the very stuff of life – about the political, emotional, romantic and (especially) spiritual sides of us talking animals? As opposed to the flashing billboard messages – direct and dull – that make up most Christian music, this one mystifies, intrigues, and ultimately still reveals new insights after dozens of listenings. It’s an album even a Nitzsche could love. [Chris Willman, CCM, April 1988]
Following a brief brush with country music, T-Bone Burnett’s seventh solo release, The Talking Animals, continues the studio rock he began in 1983 with Proof Through the Night. Burnett once again starts with basic rock, pop, and folk roots, which he wastes no time in subverting, adding assorted twists along the way. Along with co-producer and guitarist David Rhodes, he colors a foundation of steady rhythms driven by drummer Mickey Curry and bassist Tony Levin with affected and atmospheric guitars, as well as Mitchell Froom’s various keyboards. One exception is the Van Dyke Parks-arranged «Image», with its swirling strings and one verse repeated in four different languages by Burnett and three guest vocalists (Cait O’Riordan, Rubén Blades, and Ludmilla). Here he sheds the bounds of the standard pop song format to create a piece that seems to have sprung from a Weill-Brecht musical. Lyrically, The Talking Animals, like his best work, can be scathing, searching, and surreal. Burnett explores uncertainty, longing, fear, lust, fantasy, greed, and eventually justice and mercy in his quest for «The Wild Truth» (the title of one of the album’s best tracks). Often criticized for preaching, Burnett seems to ask as much of himself as he does of the cast of characters here, even allowing one of them to denounce him in the wonderful final cut, «The Strange Case of Frank Cash and the Morning Paper» (although it’s T-Bone Burnett who gets the last word). Even with a few less than stellar songs, The Talking Animals is a strong, inspired record. Bono, Peter Case, and Tonio K. each co-write with Burnett, as well as lending support on vocals. [Brett Hartenbach, AMG]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-talking-animals/303140841)
LP tracklist:
Side One
A1. “The Wild Truth” – 3:35
A2. “Monkey Dance” – 4:38
A3. “Image” – 4:01
A4. “Dance, Dance, Dance” – 2:44
A5. “The Killer Moon” – 4:56
Side Two
B1. “Rentlentless” – 3:23
B2. “Euromad” – 4:20
B3. “Purple Heart” – 4:35
B4. “You Could Look It Up” – 2:39
B5. “The Strange Case Of Frank Cash And The Morning Paper” – 5:23
Note: Simultaneously released on cassette, 12-inch vinyl LP, and CD by CBS Records.
“The Killer Moon” (MUSIC VIDEO)
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