In his strangely discreet manner, David Byrne is one of the most electrifying musicians in the last 50 years.
Since he started experimenting with the idea of what a concert can be with Talking Heads “Stop Making Sense” tour in 1983, few artists have done such great things in such a low key way, or innovated in ways that seem so obvious but are still more or less unsurpassed-like nine musicians who take the stage one on a while to get a mini-living room at a time or to have the whole band’s mobile and in constant motion with its Career -Spanning “American Utopia” -Show At the end of the last decade.
In fact, “Utopia” is an extremely tough act to follow, and obviously Byrne is no longer the rubber-glued artist he was four decades ago. But “who is heaven?” Tour, in support of his 11th studio album with the same name – which started a four night stand in New York’s Radio City Music Hall on Tuesday evening – finds him deliver a generous number of classics while visiting and reinventing other corners of his catalog along with most of the new album, all delivered with yet another deeply fantasy presentation.
(Photo: Rich Fury/Msg Entertainment)
The concept “Utopia” has continued – the band members are mobile, constantly moving and dressed in light blue, but it is otherwise a whole new production. There are now five dancers singers, which create a powerful choir and a more heavily choreographed presentation, and the back and pages of the stage are filled with a giant floor-to-roof-curved video screen that changes dramatically with each song. For “naive melody (this must be the place)” it is a Bukolian forest; For “house in motion” we move down a night street at night with taillights and street lights that are increasingly blurred into impressionistic images; For the new “Like Humans DO” it is a light white screen with Shel Silverstein-island characters that pop in and out; For “my apartment is my friend”, we are transported to his actual apartment in New York (which is really nice).
Byrne and the musicians are constantly moving through the show in intricate steps that are closer to the march than dancing (the dancers take care of it), with the man who fades in the squad when another member solo or is highlighted – and each of the 13 people on stage gets at least a moment in spotlight. As he told Variety in an interview earlier this year, mobility “democratized” the band, and he reveals it without ever forgetting who people are actually there to see.
He applies the same philosophy to the set list: he knows the audience wants the classics, but he has a new album to market and he also does not want to be associated with an oldies show or repeat too many songs from “Utopia.” So during the first half of the concert, he switches Talking Heads-songs-Il delivered in their familiar arrangements, sometimes completely invented-with new or more recent. The show opens calm with a fantastic acoustic arrangement of 1979’s “Heaven”, with only violin and another string instrument that we could not identify from our place. Since the new “Everybody Laughs”, since Talking Head ‘1985 -Hit “and she was”, then “Strange Undetones” from her reunion album 2008 with Brian Eno, since the 1980s “Hous in motion” in his sloping funk arrangement (with the dancers who penetrate over the stage).
So it goes until the middle of the show, when we get several songs from the new album, interspersed with deep cut (the talking heads’ “slippery people” and “(nothing but) flowers,” his cover of paramore’s “Hard Times”) and then the ROUNS. “Psycho Killer” (which he did not play in “American Utopia”) that features the dancers in their most elaborate choreography of the night, followed by a driving “life during wartime” performed completely under cutting blue light until the end, when pictures from the latest anti-dishes. understatement?). It is one of several low -key comments about the country’s political environment, of which the most obvious is a gigantic “Make America Gay Again” statement in rainbow -colored on screen, accompanied by a hollow Burger King logo that instead reads “No Kings.”
Photo: Rich Fury/Msg Entertainment
Finally, the main set is closed with the usual show-stopper, “once in a lifetime”, which begins in an unknown manner’s synthesizer in combination with a strangely sync-operated base-note it shifts into the familiar arrangement. It is performed with the screens that illuminate the stage in a lively shade of orange-to-the-end moments, when mental effects worth a nine-inch nails show blasting at the audience quick fire while the dancers freestyle. In combination with the song’s arousing finale, it makes an explosive end to the main set.
Interestingly, Encore has two houses with a house theme, the new “Everybody’s Coming to My House” as a nice breathing before he crushes the energy to close “Burning Down the House.”
Byrne sings, plays and moves at almost every moment of the two-hour plus set, an achievement of endurance and agility that would challenge artists 20 years younger. The tour moves across North America for the next two months and then goes to Australia/New Zealand and Europe during the new year – even relaxed fans will not want to miss it.
Setlist:
Sky
Everyone laughs
And she was
Strange overtones
House in motion
T-shirt
(Nothing but) flowers
This must be the place (naive melody)
What is the reason for that?
As people do
Don’t be like that
Independence Day
Slippery
I met Buddha at a center party
My apartment is my friend
Difficult times
Psychodillars
Life during wartime
Once in life
Encore:
All come to my house
Burns down the house
