Talking Heads will release some “newly discovered” early demos they recorded as The Artistics for Record Store Day Black Friday 2025. Find all the details below.
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This year’s edition of the RSD sister event is due to take place on Friday (November 28). To celebrate, David Byrne and co. are sharing a 11-track vinyl, ‘Tentative Decisions: Demos & Live’, with an accompanying 7″.
The project contains very early versions of ‘Psycho Killer’ and ‘Warning Sign’ from when the NYC band were known as The Artistics.
As Brooklyn Vegan reports, the recordings were believed to be lost until they were recently discovered in the Rhode Island School Of Design archives.
Talking Heads have shared some details about the collection on social media, writing: “BEFORE THEY WERE TALKING HEADS: Band members Chris Frantz and David Byrne met at Rhode Island School Of Design and made music as The Artistics. In the spring semester of 1974, the band gathered in Chris’s apartment to record a demo tape featuring tracks that eventually became classics in the Talking Heads discography – ‘Psycho Killer’ and ‘Warning Sign’.
“Over 50 years later, you can now listen to this newly discovered material, plus live tracks recorded by the original trio lineup of @frantzchris, @davidbyrneofficial, and Tina Weymouth, on ‘Tentative Decisions: Demos & Live’.”
The LP and 7″ “traces the band’s progression from raw punk minimalism to a more structured, angular musical approach that reflects broader shifts in post-punk aesthetics of the late 1970s”.
Per the announcement, the releases are only available at participating record stores on Black Friday.
The full tracklists for Talking Heads’ ‘Tentative Decisions: Demos & Live’ are:
LP:
A1. ‘Psycho Killer (September 1975 Demo)’
A2. ‘Tentative Decisions (September 1975 Demo)’
A3. ‘No Compassion (September 1975 Demo)’
A4. ‘Warning Sign (September 1975 Demo)’
A5. ‘I’m Not In Love (1976 Demo)’
B1. ‘Thank You For Sending Me An Angel (1976 Demo)’
B2. ‘The Book I Read (1976 Demo)’
B3. ‘I Wish You Wouldn’t Say That (1976 Demo)’
B4. ‘Love Goes To A Building On Fire (1976 Demo)’
B5. ‘Happy Day (1976 Demo)’
B6. ‘Artists Only (Live At The Ocean Club, New York, Ny, August 17, 1976)’
7″:
A1. ‘Psycho Killer’ – The Artistics
B1. ‘Warning Sign’ – The Artistics
You can check out the list of releases for Record Store Day UK’s Black Friday event here, including projects by the likes of Sam Fender and Olivia Dean, Chappell Roan, Fred Again.. and Billie Eilish.
Over the summer, Byrne insisted that Talking Heads wouldn’t “go out on tour again” – despite them reuniting for a Q&A in 2023, around their Stop Making Sense re-release.
“Musically, I’ve gone to a very different place,” he explained. “And I also felt like there’s been a fair number of reunion records and tours. And some of them were probably pretty good. Not very many.”
The singer said around the same time that embarking on a comeback would be “a fool’s errand”, adding that he was “really enjoying” the work he was creating currently as a solo artist.
In other news, Byrne recently opened up about the possibility of him being on the spectrum, and how music had helped him with his social skills.
David Byrne is set to headline Latitude 2026 next summer alongside Lewis Capaldi and Teddy Swims, after performing at Mad Cool in Madrid. His UK and Ireland headline tour takes place in March. Find any remaining tickets here.
The icon is currently out on a run of North American shows, where he dusted off Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer’.
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