The Odd Couple

Love This Giant – David Byrne & St.Vincent

With an amount of brass that would make Mark Ronson blush and some truly brilliant juxtaposition of genres, the collaboration between these two avant-garde heavyweights is nothing short of a joyous and carefree celebration. Album opener ‘Who’ exhibits the odd couple’s lyrics at their most frivolous, whilst the vocal delivery from Byrne is powerful, yet soulful. This entwined with Vincent’s beautiful vocal runs and some truly wonderful harmony produces a truly wondrous vocal performance from the pair that is exhibited throughout the whole album. As for the instrumental side of things, horns are the order of day! Finely polished and layered brass harmonies perfectly arranged with vocals and guitar makes listens such as ‘Dinner for Two’ a truly full sounding and perfect track. As for the ultimate genre clash that is ‘Ice Age’, it is impossible to find every source of influence that Vincent and Byrne have grasped. For the sake of my word count, just imagine if La Roux and Quincy Jones had a jam session with the German National Oompah Band. Not easy right? What’s even harder to wrap your head around is how they manage to pull it off. Reckless innovation aside, when the duo is feeling a bit lazy they can always crack out the brilliantly nonchalant march ‘Lazarus’ on the weekend. With such variation, Byrne’s drawback on his Talking Heads’ roots is evident on the  penultimate track ‘The One Who Broke Your Heart’ is a welcomed bit of nostalgia coupled together with a the brilliant Sinatra-like croon “sing along, with the one who broke your heart”; a beautiful contradiction that perfectly sums up the album. With this as the prelude, it seems appropriate that the closing track is solely penned by Byrne.  ‘Outside of Space and Time’ is a brilliant goodbye from the duo as the album ends how it started; wonderful lyrics – “I know, we’ll join this cosmic Saturn, intergalactic matter, where we will meet tonight, spiralling out of sight, outside of space and time” – and a lot of horns.

Album Rating: 8