Talking Heads: 77 is quirky singer/songwriter pop; while the band plays stiff, clean nerd rock, Byrne squawks one-liners about how it takes a tough man to be a tender chicken. But for More Songs About Buildings and Food, producer Brian Eno opens up the music so that Byrne now has the sonic spritz... 

 Fear of Music is science-fiction comedy arranged for electric guitar, fleshing out Byrne’s paranoid vision of an urban world where air can hurt you, animals are setting a bad example, and heaven is a place where nothing ever happens. “Mind” and “Heaven” are beautiful ballads, while the ... 

 Remain in Light is an expertly paced, intricately layered album of future-shock Afro-disco polyrhythms, revved up and spliced together with hypnotic melodies, dense electronics, Adrian Belew’s crazed guitar shrieks, and echoes of Nigerian highlife. In “Crosseyed and Painless,” “Houses in ... 

 As the Tom Tom Club’s twitchy synth-pop hit “Genius of Love” crossed over to rap radio and got mixed into early Sugar Hill singles, the Heads’ fascination with pop became a two-way dialogue for the first time. Speaking in Tongues sounds inspired by “Genius of Love” and by the prospect... 

 The Heads followed their hit concert film Stop Making Sense with a redundant soundtrack that left out the movie’s highlight, an acoustic “Heaven” (restored on the 1999 edition).  

 For Little Creatures, Byrne reconvened the Heads to play some foursquare folk-rock ditties he’d written solo, no polyrhythms or funny business; unfortunately, Byrne needs polyrhythms and funny business, because he doesn’t have much knack for hooky rock tunes. Little Creatures has some lively ... 

 True Stories collects leftovers from the same session into a dubious soundtrack to Byrne’s dubious debut film.  

 Naked rallied the Heads for one last attempt at African music, this time soukous, with the usual glut of gee-whiz humor and pedigreed guest musicians. Naked was obviously inspired by the success of Paul Simon’s Graceland, but times had changed, and the world-music industry had come into its own... 

 Sand in the Vaseline and The Best of Talking Heads might not be the way to get to know such a concept-album band, but there’s no denying that radio shots such as “Once in a Lifetime,” “Psycho Killer,” and “Wild Wild Life” burn down the house. 

 Sans Byrne, the band regrouped in 1996 as “The Heads” to make No Talking, Just Head with a lineup of guest vocalists that resembled a halfway house for ’80s refugees (Michael Hutchence! Maria McKee! Gordon Gano!). You couldn’t blame them for trying, and they couldn’t blame you for not b... 

 Once in a Lifetime is a box set flawed by banal liner notes, poor song selection, and unbelievably ugly design: all told, a package that sums up the band’s cute side rather than the abrasive intelligence and acerbic wit that made them special.  

 Sand in the Vaseline and The Best of Talking Heads might not be the way to get to know such a concept-album band, but there’s no denying that radio shots such as “Once in a Lifetime,” “Psycho Killer,” and “Wild Wild Life” burn down the house. 

 The Heads pursued solo projects for the next few years, releasing the excellent live retrospective The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads, which improbably turned “Drugs” into an arena anthem.  

 2005’s Talking Heads (a/k/a the “brick” box) is an annoying doorstop that has all the original albums.