Music

CD Review Revue

***
Now It's Overhead's Andy LeMaster could recite backwards and forwards every song in the Talk Talk catalog if called upon. But you should also know that the occasional Bright Eyes collaborator takes such musical mountains by strategy, and as easy as it would be to claim that his band's second disc, Fall Back Open, is plagiarized from someone else's book of song, the handwriting is all too clear. LeMaster did last night's assigned reading while his fellow classmates sat around pulling tubes--outshining wandering would-bes like the Album Leaf's Jimmy LaValle or Joan of Arc's Tim Kinsella--and if such comparisons can leave him sounding just a touch more educated, well, that's because he is. Fall Back Open is proof that LeMaster is poised to stand alone; why else would he call in Michael Stipe to sing backup vocals? TREVOR KELLEY

DAVID BYRNE

Grown Backwards

(Nonesuch Records)

***
In the ex-Talking Heads frontman's seventh solo release, David Byrne gets his croon on using a string quartet as his primary rhythm section. Byrne, like Beck and David Bowie, reinvents himself with every release, and Grown Backwards delivers a more melodic and marimba-based vehicle for Byrne's absurdly poignant lyrics. One of the album's highlights is a cover of Lambchop's tender, melancholic "The Man Who Loved Beer"; Byrne did away with the steel guitars, but otherwise remains faithful to the cerebral tear-in-your-beer tune. The intensely hummable refrain of "Tiny Apocalypse" is reminiscent of "Road to Nowhere"'s gentle, lulling chorus. Scratchy sharp cellos kick off "The Other Side of This Life," segueing into the great opening lyric, "I don't have any more problems." With a line like that, one almost has to keep listening to decide if Byrne is full of shit or really onto something--or whether those two options must be mutually exclusive. CHAS BOWIE

**** Fritz *** Sylvester ** Garfield * Cats

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