It says something about David Byrne's current position in popular music that two of the records released in 2001 on his Luaka Bop label -- Shuggie Otis' "Inspiration Information" and Jim White's "No Such Place" -- received more press than Byrne's own solo album, "Look Into the Eyeball."

The relative lack of attention has less to do with the quality of the Byrne disc than with the topicality of the Otis and White albums, the former thanks to its 25-year reputation (it's a re-release) as a foreshadow of '80s funk-rock and the latter because of its countryfied weirdness. "Look Into the Eyeball" is just another worthy attempt by Byrne to be taken seriously as a singer-songwriter.

At the helm of Talking Heads, Byrne was responsible for the last great surge of originality in rock. Outside of hip-hop and certain branches of electronica, everything that has emerged in pop music for the past 20 years has been pastiche, and while there's been a lot of great pastiche, nothing during that time has sounded as new as the first three Heads albums. At one time, Byrne was simply the most topical person in rock; everything he did attracted and, more significantly, deserved notice. Now, he's at the point where everything he does attracts and, more significantly, deserves respect. There's a difference.