Tina Weymouth and husband Chris Frantz are best known as the rhythmic backbone to the Talking Heads' influential sound, something which most critics agree peaked around the turn of the 1980s with the 'Remain In Light' album. That was a record informed by African rhythms and David Bowie's Berlin trilogy and producer Brian Eno's input led to the pioneering 'My Life In The Bush of Ghosts' album with Heads frontman David Byrne which pioneered 'found' sounds and cut-ups long before terms like 'sampling' entered the vernacular.
It was a time of major creativity within the Heads camp. Keyboard and guitar player Jerry Harrison released a solo album 'The Red & The Black', yet while Harrison and Byrne's solo activity garnered the critical plaudits, the less-likely Frantz and Weymouth side project THE TOM TOM CLUB was the one that sneaked through the side door and racked up some unexpected chart success.
With hindsight, it's not too hard to hear why. David Byrne may have had the ear of the critics, but the Tom Tom Club aimed straight for the heart of the dance floor with the cool, quirky sounds of their evergreen hit singles 'Wordy Rappinghood' and 'Genius of Love'. With their cheeky take on pop, funk and the sounds of the burgeoning New York Hip-Hop rap acts like Grandmaster Flash and The Sugarhill Gang, they were cool, infectious records which showed there was much more to these guys than mere cerebrality.
On the back of the singles' success, the Tom Tom Club's album arrived and it's still a lot of fun. Yes, there's some filler – 'Booming and Zooming' and a lightweight cover of The Drifters' summer hit 'Under The Boardwalk' fail to distinguish themselves – but there are some excellent tracks. Not least 'L'Elephant”s rough'n'tumble pop with guest Adrian Belew's overdriven lead guitar and the slower and menacing 'As Above, So Below' which taps into a similar fractured funk to 'Remain In Light'.
The expanded, re-mastered edition of 'Tom Tom Club' comes back to back with a first-time-on-CD issue of their 1983 follow-up 'Close To The Bone', though this provokes mixed feelings from your reviewer. Yes, it's great it's appeared on disc at last, but sadly much of it hasn't aged quite as gracefully as their debut.
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As you might expect from a mid-80s release, it's technology that poses the problem in the main. Opening track 'Pleasure of Love' is drenched in Emulators, Fairlights and the sort of (then) cutting edge studio trickery that ensures records from this period now sound horribly dated. Sure, Tina Weymouth's vocal is sassy enough, but when you've got a drummer of Chris Frantz's calibre involved, why isn't he behind the kit?
Unfortunately, similar problems plague tracks like 'On The Line Again' (which also succumbs to Level 42-style rubber thumb bass lines) and the faux reggae outing 'Bamboo Town'. Meanwhile, despite its' best attempts to “rock the house!”, 'Atsababy (Life is Great)' just sounds like a gatecrasher without a party to hit.
It's not a total disaster. When Frantz does finally hop behind the kit and the guitars are given some space to get funky – as on 'It's a Foxy World' and the brilliantly-title 'Man With 4-Way Hips' – they're more than capable of dancing this mess around. There's also a late rally involving the cool and sultry 'Measure Up' and the fine 'Never Took A Penny' which is a much-better reggae mash-up than the iffy 'Bamboo Town'.
Ultimately, this expanded 2CD affair is a bit of a mixed blessing. It's absolutely right that Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth's playful, pioneering pop-funk sound should be afforded some recognition in its' own right, but certainly in the case of 'Closer To The Bone' it's easier to applaud the concept than the execution. Still, summer's here, so it's probably as good a time as any to be selective with the 'skip' button and get down to 'Wordy Rappinghood' and 'Genius of Love' all over again.
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