Listen to the New David Byrne/St. Vincent Album, Love This Giant. Free for a Limited Time

Over twen­ty years after the Talk­ing Heads, the band’s for­mer front­man David Byrne seems more cre­ative than ever. Even aside from his numer­ous solo albums, he’s late­ly writ­ten books on cycling and the nature of music, advo­cat­ed for cycling itself, and craft­ed an intri­cate dis­co opera with Fat­boy Slim about Imel­da Mar­cos, for­mer first lady of the Philip­pines. (Less recent­ly, but still a per­son­al favorite of mine, was his “I ♥ Pow­er­Point” tour.) Now we have Love This Giant, a new musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion between Byrne and singer-song­writer Annie Clark, bet­ter known as St. Vin­cent. Hav­ing orig­i­nal­ly joined forces on a ben­e­fit for the AIDS and home­less­ness char­i­ty Hous­ing Works, the two decid­ed to go ahead and cre­ate an entire album togeth­er, engag­ing a brass band and craft­ing a dozen songs well up to Byrne’s eclec­tic, cere­bral, and sur­pris­ing­ly funky stan­dard (even if those three descrip­tors, though appro­pri­ate, have become clichés regard­ing any music in the sphere of the Talk­ing Heads).

At the top of this post, you’ll find embed­ded the video for “Who,” one of the tracks which fea­tures the vocals of both Byrne and Clark but on which Byrne takes the lead. Just above, you’ll find “Week­end in the Dust,” with Clark at the top of the mix. But why set­tle for YouTube videos when, at least for a lit­tle while, you can stream the entire album at NPR.org?

For a record­ing artist of long stand­ing, Byrne has dis­played an unusu­al­ly clear head about the changes under­way in the com­merce of music: “The ‘indus­try’ had a nice 50-year ride,” he once blogged, “but it’s time to move on.” With that in mind, he and Clark will launch a 24-date tour lat­er this month which promis­es many things, includ­ing but not limt­ed to “com­plex chore­og­ra­phy.” Still, no mat­ter the state of sales and dis­tri­b­u­tion, it always comes back to how strong­ly the music com­pels. “A lot of peo­ple, hear­ing a descrip­tion of this project, assumed that it might be an art­sy indul­gence,” Byrne writes on Love This Giant’s site. “But some­how it did­n’t turn out that way. It’s a pop record—well, in my book any­way.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.