Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		1.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		5.0
Overall		5.0

Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 2, 2025

Rhino has been curating the catalog of Talking Heads with some really appealing releases over the past year or so, including (in no particular order) Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense and Talking Heads: 77 Super Deluxe Dolby Atmos (diehard fans will also know that A24 released the actual film whose soundtrack is linked to above in both 1080 and 4K formats a bit over a year ago, hopefully keeping acolytes of David Byrne and his patently odd cohort satisfied in both the audio and visual categories). Now Talking Heads' second album is being given the deluxe treatment by Rhino, with a huge hardback book enclosing three CDs in addition to a Blu-ray disc that offers both audio and video elements.

The Blu-ray disc offers the original album in a variety of lossless codecs (see the audio section, below), in addition to two (frankly pretty shoddy looking) old videotapes of live performances. I've included screenshots of both the main disc menu (screenshot 10) as well as the submenu showing the live performances (screenshot 9), but for convenience sake, here are the live performance set lists included on the Blu-ray disc (asterisks on this list and below in the supplements section indicate previously unreleased material):

Live at Entermedia Theater, 1978

1. “Uh-Oh, Loves Comes To Town” *
2. “The Girls Want To Be With The Girls” *
3. “The Good Thing” *
4. “Take Me To The River” *
5. “Found A Job” *
6. “Thank You For Sending Me An Angel” *

Live At Sproul Plaza (Berkeley), 1978

1. “The Big Country” *
2. “Warning Sign” *
3. “The Book I Read” *
4. “Stay Hungry” *
5. “Artists Only” *
6. “The Girls Want To Be With The Girls” *
7. “The Good Thing” *
8. “Uh-Oh, Loves Comes To Town” *
9. “Psycho Killer” *
10. “I’m Not In Love” *
11. “Pulled Up” *

Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

There are two parts to the video side of things on this release. The first is a whimsically animated image that accompanies the actual album playing, and which can be seen in screenshots 1 through 5. The already "deconstructed" original cover image here "reassembles" repeatedly, offering the band members kind of dissolving and then reforming before your eyes. As mentioned above the disc's main menu is seen in screenshot 10 and the menu accompanying the live material is shown in screenshot 9, though it should probably be mentioned that the image of the United States perhaps appropriately repeatedly distorts. The other part of the Blu-ray disc are in fact the two live performances, offered in upscaled interlaced video via MPEG-2, and looking frankly pretty bad, as also mentioned above. Screenshots 6 and 7 are from the San Francisco performance, and screenshot 8 is from the New York performance. As can probably be seen, the San Francisco upscale is littered with vertical line anomalies. The New York performance is ostensibly in relatively better condition, but looks anamorphically stretched to me. The video side of things in terms of the live performances should probably just be accepted as historical curios.

Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

More Songs About Buildings and Food features the original album in Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. The Atmos and 5.1 mixes are just hugely fun to listen to, with Byrne's kind of weirdly engaging voice especially airborne in the Atmos mix, but sounding great even in the "traditional" surround mix. Some of the quasi-funk adjacent material like With Our Love probably is the showiest in terms of the Atmos mix, with both guitars and percussion really nicely immersive and vertically spacious. I'd frankly rate the midrange of the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 version as at least slightly more full bodied than the Atmos version, and there were times where I found the Atmos mix to be just a bit bright sounding on the high end. This is another disc that has been authored so that the only way to change audio codecs is via the choices on the actual menu, which just as unfortunately starts the song over.

The two live performance videos feature DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks, which are in much better condition than the video side of things, but which still can't escape the live aspect, where it sounds like whatever mics were used were not especially optimally placed in terms of the band vs. audience sounds.

Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This is another incredibly packaged release from Rhino. Let's start with the other discs in the package, as follows:

CD One: Original Album (2025 Remaster)

1. "Thank You For Sending Me An Angel"
2. "With Our Love"
3. "The Good Thing"
4. "Warning Sign"
5. "The Girls Want To Be With The Girls"
6. "Found A Job"
7. "Artists Only"
8. "I'm Not In Love"
9. "Stay Hungry"
10. "Take Me To The River"
11. "The Big Country"

CD Two: Rarities

1. "Thank You For Sending Me An Angel" (Alternate Version)
2. "With Our Love" (Alternate Version) *
3. "Found A Job" (Alternate Version) *
4. "The Good Thing" (Alternate Version) *
5. "Warning Sign" (Alternate Version)
6. "Electricity" (Instrumental)
7. "The Girls Want To Be With The Girls" (Alternate Version) *
8. "I'm Not In Love" (Alternate Version)
9. "Artists Only" (Alternate Version)
10. "The Big Country" (Alternate Version)
11. "Thank You For Sending Me An Angel" ("Country Angel" Version)

CD Three: Live At Entermedia Theater, New York, NY (August 10, 1978)

1. "No Compassion" *
2. "Warning Sign" *
3. "The Book I Read" *
4. "Stay Hungry" *
5. "Artists Only" *
6. "The Girls Want To Be With The Girls" *
7. "Uh-Oh, Loves Comes To Town" *
8. "With Our Love" *
9. "Love Goes To A Building On Fire" *
10. "Don't Worry About The Government" *
11. "The Good Thing" *
12. "Electricity"*
13. "The Big Country" *
14. "New Feeling" *
15. "Pulled Up" *
16. "Psycho Killer" *
17. "Take Me To The River" *
18. "Found A Job" *
19. "Thank You For Sending Me An Angel" *

The CDs and Blu-ray disc are all enclosed in their own "mini LP"-esque sleeves which are themselves enclosed in pockets, two inside the front cover and two inside the back cover, of an all encompassing hardback book which measures approximately 9 1/4" wide by 12 1/8" high by 3/4" thick. The book is going to be a treasure trove for fans, offering a ton of great stills and remembrances from Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, David Byrne and Jerry Harrison.

Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

With the way Warner Music Group in general and Rhino in particular have continued to offer lovers of hi res audio such spectacular releases so consistently, I may be revisiting my unusual choice from a couple of years ago to name a "genre", namely audio Blu-ray itself, to my top spot on 2025's Top 10 list coming out in early 2026. I frankly like this album a lot more than Talking Heads 77, and this fantastic new release has only reinvigorated my appreciation for it. The video on the live performances is pretty spectacularly awful, but the good news is with a release as generally superb as this one, that hardly matters. Highly recommended.