Speaking in Tongues, Talking Heads' first studio release in three years, is the album that finally obliterates the thin line separating arty white pop music and deep black funk. Picking up where their 1980 Afro-punk fusion Remain in Light left off, this LP consummates the Heads' marriage of art-school intellect and dance-floor soul…. Speaking in Tongues gives new meaning to the word crossover. (p. 53)

The Heads have never cut the funk into finer, more fluent pieces. Nor have they ever displayed such a sense of purpose and playfulness…. (pp. 53-4)

[It] is David Byrne's propulsive score for Twyla Tharp's 1981 dance piece The Catherine Wheel that may be the most important influence on Speaking in Tongues. The severe constraints of matching music to movement—of making music inspire expressive movement—forced Byrne to write and arrange his Catherine Wheel score with both crisp dramatic precision and provocative imagistic flair.

The...