After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

Does anyone listen to Remain in Light past "Once in a Lifetime"? I've heard "Houses in Motion" get some love, but no one (including me) has claimed much for the three dirges with which the album concludes. The liquid-terror plot foiled a few days ago brought to mind "Listening Wind," which might be the most unsettling track on an album whose grooves throb and rumble with enough existential portent as it is.

The track may chronicle the dawning political consciousness of a nascent terrorist, but David Byrne's he-sees-he-thinks verses (it's like he's keeping a safari journal) complement his demotic melodies. Imagine the narrator of "The Big Country" landing his plane by the banks of the Congo and proceeding upriver; confronting the Heart of Darkness vaporizes his Western condescension (that Byrne regressed to confused up-with-people sincerity makes True Stories doubly offensive). Mojique's evolution is dreadful in its banality; he knows not what he does, but since he's following the wind's instructions it's a reflex as involuntary as sleeping. For a song in which terrible violence is intimated Mojique doesn't seem very angry, or determined; the colonialist tropes (the would-be saboteur's "friend the wind" orders him to construct bombs to destroy foreigners) define instead of cheapen his quest. Like Remain in Light's other slippery people -- troubled men of intelligence who are nonetheless dividing and dissolving or changing their shapes -- Mojique prefers to be acted upon by his environment, which is enough. The minimalist percussion, synth colors, and oddly timed guitar squeals (they flitter like birds) by the Expanded Heads evoke a wind heavy with unspoken threats. The beautiful chorus melody, sung by a doubletracked Byrne in the voice of Mojique, cushions the only sentence fragments Byrne writes, yet they don't seem so because he phrases them with full-throated force.

"The Overload" records the aftermath: no second coming, no center, just evisceration ("the removal of the insides"), a surfeit of feeling, and a benumbed admission that perhaps actions do have consequences. It could be a missive from beyond the grave: terrorists rarely survive their deeds. Makes you wonder whether "Same as it ever was" is a conclusion or another question.