Love This Giant, released in 2012 through 4AD Records & Todomundo, is the sole collaborative studio album by Scottish-American art pop musician David Byrne and American Alternative Rock musician Annie Clarke, a.k.a. St. Vincent.
Marking Byrne's ninth studio album overall and Clarke's fourth, the project was born out of a chance meeting between the two at a 2009 performance between Björk and Dirty Projectors at New York's Housing Works thrift store. One of the concert's organizers suggested that Byrne and Clarke try a similar collaboration; the two had already known each other from a previous meeting at an AIDS/HIV charity concert, and respected each other as indie musicians, Clarke having been influenced by Byrne's prior work with Talking Heads. Initially planning a single live performance at most, the project expanded into a full-length album after Clarke suggested adding a brass band to the lineup, viewing the sound as an adept middle ground between the two's disparate styles.
Consequently, the album bases itself around horn-driven Baroque Pop, fitting the art pop sound Byrne had leaned into since Look into the Eyeball in 2001 while also building itself around Clarke's own musical eccentricity. With both artists being singers, the two alternate lead vocals from song to song, occasionally acting as each other's backing vocalists and even duetting on "Lazarus". At the same time, Byrne's lyrical contributions grow more introspective than before; in 2009, he learned and publicly revealed that he had Asperger's Syndrome (later absorbed into autism by the APA the year after this album's release). Talking Heads bandmate Tina Weymouth previously claimed that this was the case, but Byrne denied it for years due to the pair's testy relationship and, by his own admission years later, his unawareness of what Asperger's actually was. As a result of his belated finding, Byrne's songs on Love This Giant become focused more on themes of self-exploration, with Byrne later stating that at least one track, "I Should Watch TV", was outright autobiographical.
To promote the album, Byrne and Clarke relied on a similar viral marketing model as the former's earlier collaborative work, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Reenlisting the help of Topspin Media, the duo started with a digital release of opening track "Who" and an accompanying music video before releasing the album for streaming via NPR and custom GUI widgets. The duo would also spend a year after the album's release touring around the world in support of it, combining the album's brass lineup with complex choreography. An EP consisting of outtakes, remixes, and live recordings, Brass Tactics, was released in 2013 midway through the tour as a further form of support.
The result translated to far greater success than anything Byrne had previously seen: peaking at No. 23 on the Billboard 200, it marked his first "hit" album as a solo artist and his first taste of Top 40 success of any kind since Talking Heads' final album, Naked, all the way back in 1988. The IMCA in Europe would further certify it silver. For Clarke meanwhile it was a step down from the No. 19 peak of her previous album, Strange Mercy.
Love This Giant was supported by two singles: "Who" and "I Should Watch TV".
Tracklist:
- "Who" (3:50)
- "Weekend in the Dust" (3:05)
- "Dinner for Two" (3:43)
- "Ice Age" (3:13)
- "I Am an Ape" (3:05)
- "The Forest Awakes" (4:52)
- "I Should Watch TV" (3:08)
- "Lazarus" (3:13)
- "Optimist" (3:49)
- "Lightning" (4:15)
- "The One Who Broke Your Heart" (3:46)
- "Outside of Space and Time" (4:34)
Aberration makes you trope dark shadows:
- Album Title Drop: The line "behold and love this giant" appears in "I Should Watch TV".
- Animal Motifs: "I Am an Ape" uses apes as a metaphor for gracelessness and bluntness.
- As the Good Book Says...: "Lazarus" adapts the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (no relation to the guy that Jesus resurrected).
- Call-Back: "Lazarus" namedrops Talking Heads' "Cool Water" and invokes similar imagery of hard labor and class struggle.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The music video for "Who" is shot this way.
- Design Student's Orgasm: The CD release comes packaged in an elaborately-designed PVC envelope, with the credits printed on the outside and multiple art cards included within. The cards can be swapped around to rearrange the album's exterior design, in the vein of New Order's Low-Life nearly 30 years prior. The LP release meanwhile uses a conventional gatefold sleeve, despite vinyl sales having been on the rise for years by that point.
- Driven to Suicide: Clarke's character in the "Who" music video is implied to be at this point, being found lying in the middle of the road at the start. At the end, Byrne's character trades places with her.
- Face on the Cover: Notably the only collaborative album of Byrne's to do this, featuring him and Clarke wearing prosthetic chins.
- Genius Loci: "The Forest Awakes" invokes this metaphorically, describing how "a song is a road, a road is a face, a face is a time, and a time is a place."
- Let's Duet: While most of the album features Byrne & Clarke forming a Vocal Tag Team, the two outright duet on "Lazarus".
- Literary Allusion Title: The album takes its name from the Walt Whitman poem Song of Myself."I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not stop there."
- Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: Humorously played with on the packaging. While the front logo and cover photo include traditionally opposing "male" and "female" clothes for Byrne and Clarke, respectively, their prosthetic chins invert the typically feminine "beauty" and the typically masculine "beast."
- New Sound Album: Brassy Baroque Pop, a deviation from the electro-gospel of Everything That Happens Will Happen Today and the guitar-driven work of Clarke's typical oeuvre.
- No Ending: "I Am an Ape" abruptly cuts off at the end.
- One-Man Song: "Lazarus".
- One-Word Title: "Who", "Lazarus", "Optimist", "Lightning".
- Shout-Out:
- The prosthetic chins Byrne and Clarke wear on the cover are designed to invoke a gender-inverted "Beauty and the Beast" dynamic, with Byrne playing the chiseled beauty and Clarke the grotesque beast.
- "The Forest Awakes" and "I Should Watch TV" are both based on Walt Whitman's poems, with "I Should Watch TV" being specifically inspired by Song of Myselfnote , which also gives the album its name. Whitman gets a writing credit on "The Forest Awakes" as a result.
- "Optimist" namedrops the Brooklyn-based indie band Vivian Girls.
- Skewed Priorities: "The Forest Awakes" sees its narrator mention being relatively unconcerned about being in the midst of an air raid, so long as their hairdo is unaffected.
- Soprano and Gravel: While Byrne's singing voice is by no means deep, its age-induced ruggedness contrasts with Clarke's oftentimes ethereal performances throughout the album.
- Special Guest:
- Anthony LaMarca of the War on Drugs plays drums on "Who".
- Alex Foster and Lenny Pickett of the Saturday Night Live in-house band and Ian Hendrickson-Smith of the Roots play saxophone on "Weekend in the Dust". Pickett, a prior collaborator with Talking Heads, also provides brass arrangements on the same track.
- Steve Turre, also from the SNL band, plays trombone on "Weekend in the Dust".
- Kelly Pratt of Beirut plays trumpet on "Dinner for Two" and "Optimist", also providing brass arrangements on the former.
- Red Hot Chili Peppers touring percussionist Mauro Refosco plays snare on "The Forest Awakes", timpani on "I Should Watch TV", and surdo on "Optimist".
- Daptone Records' in-house band Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings and American Afrobeat group Antibalas play instrumentals on "The One Who Broke Your Heart".
- Taught by Television: "I Should Watch TV" is an expression of Byrne's longtime practice of this trope as a means of better connecting with society, as explained in the American Utopia concert film.
- Vocal Tag Team: Unlike Byrne's previous two collaborative albums (discounting the Here Lies Love soundtrack), this one sees him repeatedly trade off vocals with Clarke: save for "The Forest Awakes" (which was written by Byrne and sung by Clarke), each artist sings the lyrics they wrote. Byrne sings lead on tracks 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, and 12 and backing on tracks 6 and 10; Clarke sings lead on tracks 2, 4, 6, 9, and 10 and backing on tracks 1, 3, 5, 11, and 12; the two duet on track 8. In total, Byrne sings lead on more tracks, but Clarke has a greater number of overall appearances.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: "Dinner for Two" casually mentions "tanks outside the bedroom window" as if it's an everyday occurrence.
