David Byrne

That all four Talking Heads were genuine Thinking and Playing Heads, rather than merely assembling a musical machine under Byrne's sole direction, is, I believe, an established fact: his radicalism was happily tempered by the Frantz couple's playful spirit, while Jerry Harrison's experience and eclecticism proved substantially important at several pivotal moments in the band's career. It's no coincidence, then, that Byrne's solo path has covered quite different territory, at times drawing on a dazzling encyclopedia of styles (“Rei Momo”, 1989), at others teetering precariously along the bumpy road of a hybridism that occasionally veers into the overly cerebral (“Uh-Oh”, 1992 and “Feelings”, 1997), and at others still taking shape in a dark, minimal key (the best of the lot: “David Byrne”, 1994). And that's without mentioning his many parallel projects (soundtracks — “The Last Emperor”, “Married To The Mob”, the recent “Young Adam” — and music for ballets and theatre productions — the little-known yet gorgeous “The Forest” chief among them), tangible evidence, alongside his legendary past, of a healthy creative schizophrenia: Byrne is one of the artists who, ennobling it, has spent the years since the late '70s proving that rock can be a complex, “high” language that ill suits rigid categories and limiting labels.

On the other hand, anyone expecting him to follow up a musically settled, “classic” album like “Grown Backwards” – on which, continuing the approach launched by its predecessor, he starts from melody and only surrenders to groove as a second thought – with a strictly “matching” concert, will be surprised by a performance in which, instead, every side of the musician answers the call, together painting a faithful and, to say the least, wide-ranging portrait of a career (it's no accident the tour is called My Backwards Life). Alongside the seasoned trio of Paul Frazier (bass), Graham Hawthorne (drums) and Mauro “golden hands” Refosco (percussion, keyboards, xylophone), the musician is joined on this tour by the Tosca Strings, a Texan sextet well versed in crossover experiences ranging from country to tango, with the set swinging between the seductive harmonies of the strings and the syncopated colors of the rhythm section.

The show opens with “Glass Concrete & Stone”, a piece originally written for the closing credits of Stephen Frears's “Piccoli Affari Sporchi”, which, while also showcasing the splendid work Byrne continues to do on ever more stylized and inspired lyrics, highlights the remarkable orchestral blend: it's in this same vein of elegant execution that, further on, we find the anticlimaxes of “Ausencia”, the cover of the Cesaria Evora track featured in the soundtrack to Emir Kusturica's “Underground”, and the Verdi-esque “Un Dì Felice, Eterea”, placed, with ironic strategy, right after a predictably orgiastic “Once In A Lifetime”, from “Remain In Light”, the crowning achievement of the storied quartet's output.

But however much Byrne insists on his reinterpretations, more or less eccentric as they may be (the previous tour featured an amused cover of Whitney Houston's "I Want To Dance With Somebody"), it's within his own back catalogue that his performance truly shines, proving there's no shortage of gems even in his most recent work (especially "The Great Intoxication" and "UB Jesus", from the penultimate "Look Into The Eyeball" — an album rather underrated at the time, and from which Byrne also draws "Like Humans Do", the almost Beatles-esque "Smile" and "Desconocido Soy" — all of which sound achingly good).

Compared to the early dates of the tour, the focus on the past thus proves dominant: "This Must Be The Place" is a gentle madeleine; the auditorium catches fire at the notes of the irresistible little march that is "Road To Nowhere" (from "Little Creatures", the Heads' biggest commercial hit); from "Naked", the band's last album, released in that fateful year of 1988, Byrne offers an all-acoustic version of "(Nothing But) Flowers" (recently covered by Caetano Veloso) and a sumptuous "Blind", a track that blends genres, rap included (the driving verse), and which to today's ears sounds like a preview of everything to come in his solo career. The ensemble dresses up classics like "Life During Wartime" or "I Zimbra" with miraculous ease, ably backing Byrne's energetic drive even on "What A Day That Was", and not shying away from the indestructible "Psycho Killer" either, a song that has only recently reappeared in the setlist: at the request of Jamie Deasautels, the violinist who arranged it for his Tosca Strings, Byrne revives an essential track that over the years has been put through every possible treatment (from the hyper-minimalist guitar-and-drum-machine version to the delirious trip-hop hypnosis of the 1997 tour): here, following the refined interplay of the strings, the artist declaims the verses in stentorian fashion, only picking up the familiar melody for the refrain. There's less material from the very latest album heard on this date: a shame, because it was precisely the live dimension that gave those songs a freshness that the disc's rigid chamber-music approach ends up sacrificing ("Dialog Box", the most Heads-like track on the tracklist, sounds sharp and effective onstage), but there's no point dwelling on it too much, especially when the goosebump-inducing penultimate song is "Heaven", and Byrne sings it with only his acoustic guitar for accompaniment.

The performance closes with "Lazy", a genuine hit made with X Press 2, included in the European edition of "Grown Backwards", of which the American offers, in his own words, an adaptation of the remake: the arrangement work here is truly remarkable, elevating a track whose melodic invention isn't exactly memorable. Two hours of great music, a beautifully written summary of an enviable artistic career.

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