David Byrne - A Schizophrenic Chameleon

The divertissement of collaboration: from "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts" to "Music For The Knee Plays"

The first step toward a path magnificently paved with collaborations, outside productions and further experimentation begins with a masterpiece, itself wedged between two other monstrously inspired and fascinating releases. David Byrne's solo career begins by reaching out to Brian Eno, a man who anticipated a whole microcosm of trends, pseudo-intuitions yet to come, and sound collages of superb elegance and refinement. The cynical might even think that Eno's production work and his closeness to the Talking Heads were motivated precisely by having fully grasped the quality and depth of Byrne's genius, but setting aside these, admittedly legitimate, conjectures, the reality is that this partnership was born between the muffled descent into the psychic underworld of "Fear Of Music" and the perversely cynical pleasure of post-modern critique found on "Remain In Light".

Indeed, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, recorded in 1979, only saw the light of release in 1981 — immediately after "Remain In Light".

What happens is the perception of other worlds, knowingly filtered through altered colors, as in the most lucid of trips: sonic collages built from snatches of radio conversations strategically looped at their conceptual core ("America Is Waiting"), almost pagan invocations launched over psychotic, brooding backing tracks ("The Jezebel Spirit"), the neo-stateless European driven to flee toward shifting territories of imagery defined with essential suggestion by Dunya Yusin's Lebanese vocals ("Regiment"), the quicksand through which one must pick a path to recognize, behind the thick film of stinging grains, the mournful muezzin calling from a distant mirage ("The Carrier"), valves that, skillfully manipulated, seem almost to manipulate the listener, led to an esoteric climax by the terrifying voice resurfacing from pitch-black depths ("Come With Us"), with a final touch of serene, impalpable Eastern riddles ("Mountain Of Needless").

1981 is the explosion of David Byrne's creativity: alongside the release of My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, he produced The Catherine Wheel, the soundtrack for choreographer Twyla Tharp's ballet inspired by the figure of St. Catherine of Alexandria, staged at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre. The album, heavily shaped by Eno's influence, still very much a deus ex machina presence, and molded on the morphology of "Fear Of Music" and "Remain In Light" ("His Wife Refused" and "What A Day That Was"), opens with the golden glow of "Light Bath", flirting here and there with improbable, surreal tropicalisms ("Ade") and tribalisms of robotic aphasia ("Dinosaur"). The metropolitan dimension is perhaps the defining trait: from the reverberating echoes of mannequins escaping the stasis of shop windows ("The Red House"), to an encounter between boxers at the foot of a skyscraper ("Big Business"), passing through the hyper-tense dynamism of jogging ("Black Flag") and the rubbing against velvet floors that foreshadow a certain Lynchian unease ("The Blue Flame"). The sleep of post-modern man is never peaceful: shaken by neurotic hallucinations ("Eggs In A Briar Patch"), spectral guitars agitated by a sleepless night ("Combat"), languid moments on a riverbank lit by voyeurs wielding morbid flashlights ("Dense Beasts"). In the restless search for a new purpose, a purely cerebral aesthetic pleasure, an imagery tied to flashbacks rather than direct physical perceptions of events, the world becomes slow-motion physical movement, marked out by the chimes of a xylophone ("Cloud Chamber"), the suggestion of a mutant vocoder voice — "My Big Hands (Fall Through Of The Cracks)" — and a riot of little bells parading along some highway ("Leg Bells").

The conceptual circle, like an eternal return of the present, closes with the same track it opened with.

Building on this experience, David Byrne, outside the Talking Heads, continued down a path of collaboration, releasing in 1985 Music For The Knee Plays, twelve "musical images" for Robert Wilson's epic opera titled "The Civil Wars". The result is a work built around Byrne's narrating voice over a bed of surreal brass.

Music For The Knee Plays is a journey into the hallucination of New Orleans — "The Sound Of Business", "(The Gift Of The Sun) When The Sun Never Goes On", "I Bid You Goodnight" — that slides melancholically over cobblestone streets leading to some Eastern European tavern ("Admiral Perry"), before melting into seductive saxophone courting indolent girls in a smoky nightclub ("I've Tried"). From the bassoon that opens the dance with almost chivalric martial spirit, the album closes with a spotted, knowing oboe, its leash distractedly held by Byrne's voice, his mind elsewhere.

The genius with multiple personalities: tropicalisms, soundtracks, Superego, cup of coffee and dance remix

The magnifying glass used to probe reality, unsatisfied with a single point of view, goes looking for other images, colors, suggestions, in the sultry heat of Black Brazil, and the enthusiasm is such that Byrne decides to found a label dedicated to world music, Luaka Bop. Naturally there's room for himself too, and who better to dedicate this joyful trip to than the god of Carnival, Rei Momo? The choice fits the album's spirit perfectly, and once the initial surprise fades, one realizes just how capable Mr. Byrne is of making even a usually overlooked world — overlooked for lack of mutual affinity — entirely his own, thanks to the happy reblending of a metropolitan voice with all the standards of Caribbean music: mambo, cha cha, merengue, salsa. The hybrid fiesta begins with "Independence Day", followed by a stunning, ironic, playful mambo that Byrne doesn't hesitate to dance to, modulating his robotic jerk against the — this time — spontaneous looseness of the dancers' limbs, resulting in an improbable black-and-white video ("Make Believe Mambo"). In the village everything turns torrid and swollen as the sun sets, leaving behind a thick, sticky air that breeds reckless dancing. This is called "Loco de Amor", and it also serves as the soundtrack to "Something Wild", the 80s cult film by Jonathan Demme, starring the buttery, curly-haired Melanie Griffith. The celebration of the charanga is sinuously sketched by a visionary march into the desert ("Marching To The Wilderness"), dissolving into the half-light of a metaphysical bolero ("Women Vs. Men") until the final contemplation, underscored by the calls of frogs, birds, insects and a harmonica, leading to the reflection that "I Know Sometimes A Man Is Wrong".

In 1991 came The Forest, an imposing work written by David Byrne for a theatrical performance by director Robert Wilson, first staged in Berlin in 1988. Here we have genuine chamber music, over which the artist sings with lyrical flair about mankind's oldest myth: that of Gilgamesh and the Sumerians. The epic grandiloquence is evident from the long, almost Wagnerian intro dedicated to the splendor of the first Mesopotamian settlement ("Ur"). Knowledge of ancient glories, now relegated to a purely oneiric unconscious, is stirred by the panicked dread of "Kish", another center of Sumerian civilization, whose percussion tears through the melody of the horns as if to physically mark the human heartbeat. And further, where the body seems to float on the melancholy of "Samara", embroidered with graceful strings, the propitiatory rite is performed over the percussive obsession of "Nineveh", animated by frenzied male choirs and female laments. In closing, a flight of fancy lasting just a few minutes leads toward realms of blinding splendor, kingdoms of majestic, silent sweetness, echoed by nearly subterranean violins ("Machu Picchu"), down to the final refraction on water's mirror ("Teohiutican").

Like a return to the future, albeit with rather flaccid dynamics, Uh! Oh! in 1992 recovers the punk-funk spleen of the Talking Heads' earliest work, making ironic use of a playfully relaxed vocal register ("Now I'm Your Mom"). And tropicalism must have left recurring visions in Byrne's mind, whose choruses remain black, sunny and tribal ("Something Ain't Right"), before blending seemingly irreconcilable genres with gringos on a Caribbean trip ("The Cowboy Mambo") and monkey-men sipping drinks over horns thick with furious tension ("Monkey Man"). As if that weren't enough to unveil the mystery of a man whose mind teems with images, suggestions and impressions that, like the strongest of conditioned reflexes, resurface from layered sediment at the slightest link, he further enriches the complexity of his mental architecture with a game of tense, syncopated crooning ("A Walk In The Dark") right up to the carefree pop-song coda ("Somebody").

What happens two years later, with the self-titled album David Byrne, is, for a moment, a surrender to a renewed, metropolitan, crepuscular vein that seems to strip Byrne of every garment improvised by cultural systems as enchanting as sirens. As if slipping through a crack in the soul, the intro "A Long Time Ago" quietly foreshadows the tale of angels who, outraged by the socio-historical trajectory of the entire planet, flee it, plunging the Self into a conscious identity crisis: “I am just an advertisement/ For a version of myself/ Like molecules in constant motion/ Like a million nervous tics/ I am quivering in anticipation” ("Angels"). And while "Crash" seems ruled by the guitar of Arto Lindsay, one of the album's prestigious credits alongside John Medeski, "Back In The Box" is electricity quoting itself. The tango instead becomes a provocation used as self-defense: “You may think I look sad/ But I am just sleeping/ It’s my facial expression/ I’m probably dreaming” ("Sad Song"), where a sonic carpet, unfolding in a strikingly Gainsbourg-esque manner, wraps around the confident, seductive spoken-word of "Nothing At All". The subtle hysteria typical of the Byrne method throws itself into the jam session of "You And Eye", while toward the end it descends into cerebral depths, into the blurriest room of consciousness, one as distant a memory as the panicked dread of "Fear Of Music", here perfectly marked by Medeski's keyboard. And as if aware of the destabilization just caused, it resurfaces with the apparent immediacy of "Buck Naked".

David Byrne's output, almost afflicted by a form of hyperactivity, has never been one-directional. The Rhode Island School Of Design, which had given birth to the cerebral movement of the four talking heads, must have left behind traces upon traces of remarkable introspection, filtered through a highly personal game of crystallizing the Self that takes shape in the "Superego" project, a set of half-bust dolls each self-representing different psychic states of the artist: "Ecstasy", with a wink amid a myriad of flowers; "Love", with a glassy stare wrapped in flames; "Pride", with the self-satisfied smile of having conquered some hypothetical paradise; "Sleep", with a watery slumber. As always, it's hard not to be swept up in enthusiasm before such a staggering genius, who provocatively manages to stir the audience's own narcissism through self-representation — although it isn't mere narcissism, since Byrne would claim that Superego was first and foremost an exercise in psychic analysis, a process of looking inward and then externalizing what he saw within the Self, producing these little figures that, paradoxically, remain unknown entities even to the artist himself — in need of help, of a name, of support in carrying out their own projects and dreams. One of the Superego figures would go on to grace the cover of Feelings, a 1997 album that, true to the project's nature, charts the artist's mood as it shifts through its many forms. The turn toward a sound increasingly entangled in the web of electronics emerges immediately from the creeping opener ("Fuzzy Freaky"), continuing through the electric tango of "Dance On Vaseline" and the numbed perception of "Amnesia", before fading away to make room for the Caribbean chorus of "Miss America" — the physical embodiment of an entire continent delighting in its own madness. A Middle East straight out of an avant-garde souk opens the sinuous unfurling of "Daddy Go Down". Evoking plastic existences, a small perverse doll stages a surreal mental conflict: “Wicked little doll, I’m not your victim/ Wicked little doll, you need me too/ Wicked little doll, I’ll be your partner/ Wicked little doll, can I play too?”, alternating with a robotic voice “Those guys, some of these guys/ We’re one big happy family/ I love my little dolly/… I surrender” ("Wicked Little Doll"), closing with a languid accordion on the paradox of a love sui generis: “She put the scar on the side of his face/ When he disappeared for three days/ And they say that they are in love/ He took her cocaine when she was asleep/ Friends say he gave half away/ And they say that they are in love” ("They Are In Love").

That same year, Feelings undergoes a kind of sonic surgery via remixes curated by some of the world's leading DJing figures, resulting in a further release, The Visibile Man. "Fuzzy Freaky" gets to choose the coolest make-up between Dj Food's alien remix and the soulful touch of Mark Walk and Ruby. Meanwhile "New Kingdom" adds trip-hop anguish to the obsession of "Wicked Little Doll", followed by the icy elegance of the remix of "Dance On Vaseline", courtesy of Thievery Corporation, perhaps the most successful operation on the whole album. "You Don't Know Me", on the other hand, gives itself over to jungle in iLoop's remix. "Miss America" seems unable to shake off the cellophane in which it's plastically wrapped, which becomes lighter, though no less pointless, in the falsely lounge-like finale of "Amnesia".

The inclination toward historical-social critique of the times doesn't shy away from analysing the codes of communication and meta-communication found in end-of-millennium advertising. In 1998, in fact, Byrne produces Your Action World, which, starting from a debunking of the many clichés present in advertising language, actually demonstrates effectively how messages contain, in turn, sub-messages that are far more effective in shaping consumption on a planetary scale. Your Action World consists of a book containing the advertising artwork, together with an audio guide of roughly fifteen minutes meant to accompany the viewing of the photos. The project also finds space in Italy, at the Museo Rivoltella in Trieste, with Byrne's solo exhibition "Your Action World: Winners Are Losers With A New Attitude". On the same occasion, Illy Caffè asks Byrne to design a special cup to join its prized, stylish collection. The result is the minimal Silver Cup, coated in silver, as if to represent the mirror reflecting every human mutation.

The fascination with choreography continues on In Spite Of Wishing And Wanting, the 1999 soundtrack to the eponymous contemporary dance project by the Brussels-based company Ultima Vez. In fact, the record began taking shape as early as 1991, when Byrne met choreographer Wim Vandekeybus in Seattle, but it would take a full eight years to create a show in which the music is shaped around the movement of the body, to express its tension, its vital flow, the ever-shifting metamorphosis of its many postures. Sonically, aside from the hallucination of Dj Food's remix of "Fuzzy Freaky" and the long, robotic, lunar "Dance On Vaseline (SuperextendedRemix)", at times it feels like a return to the trans-humanoid suggestions of "The Catherine Wheel" ("Horses"), which plunge into creaking tension in the manner of Cabaret Voltaire ("Speech"), before nonchalantly shedding its skin into the leitmotif of a Maghrebi dance ("Said And The Ants").

Gaze fixed on the pupil of the new millennium

"I want to push people to dance and, at the same time, to cry." That's the aim of Look Into The Eyeball, an album that, amid Andalusian inspirations and a genuinely impressive roster of credits (from Vinicius Cantuaria to Caetano Veloso), delivers Byrne's personal take in the immediate aftermath of the year 2000 and all its pomp. And indeed, the approach, shifting from an objective account of facts to a personal reworking of stimuli, becomes more self-focused, with artwork built around his own face, which, having cast aside every artificial hair-related adornment, appears white-haired and glassy-eyed.

The long-standing love affair with tropicalismo lets all the tension of Byrne's voice resurface ("U.B. Jesus"), capable of making even a lullaby perversely innocent ("The Revolution"). The gaze fixed on the pupil of the world raises paradoxical questions over a bed of meek strings ("The Great Intoxication"), while an enjoyable cartoon video emphasises the revisiting of everyday human behaviour, summed up thus: “I’m achin’/ I’m shakin’/ I’m breakin’/ Like humans do/ I work & I sleep & I dance & I’m dead/ I’m eatin, I’m laughin & I’m lovin myself/ I never watch Tv except when I’m stoned/ Like humans do (“Like Humans Do”). Like homework to hand in to a creative-cooking teacher, there comes the strange blend of tunz tunz and the Caribbean generating an electric dance sung in Spanish alongside NRÜ from Café Macuba ("Desconoscido Soy"), before lingering over Barry White's soft disco negritude ("Neighborhood"). The last tropical outpouring comes with the small, gentle rumba of "Smile", before closing, slyly, on a bittersweet note ("Everyone's In Love With You").

The device that had already produced the desired effect with the excellent soundtrack to Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, written by Byrne with Ryuichi Sakamoto, is taken up again sixteen years later with Lead Us Not Into Temptation, made for the film "Young Adam" by Scottish director David MacKenzie – based on a 1954 book by beat writer Alexander Trocchi – with a cast that includes, among others, Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton.

The record is recorded entirely in Scotland, alongside musicians briefly "borrowed" from some of the region's most representative bands: Mogwai, Belle and Sebastian, Delgados and Appendix Out.

Right from the opening ("Body In A River"), the work seems to float on will-o'-the-wisps of Lynchian imprint, refined nocturnal jazz ("Seaside Smokes"), languidly desolate melodies embroidered by strings in what becomes a genuine recurring motif ("Canal Life"). The revisionism draws on moody horns, echoing Charles Mingus ("Haitian Song"), while a foggy tension descends at an accelerated pace over an urban path in black and white ("Inexorable").

Toward the end there's also room for a tormented courtship for solo, reticent violin ("Dirty Hair"), which in "Speechless" meets, in the only such moment on the whole album, Byrne's emotionally charged voice, creating another recurring motif and making "Lead Us Not Into Temptation", though an almost entirely instrumental soundtrack, perhaps the artist's most evocative work of the early millennium.

The next chapter in Byrne's career, after which one still expects new, astonishing output, with a little understanding for a slight, apparent slowing of his old neurosis, is 2004's Grown Backwards.

A decidedly ambitious proposal, perhaps his most ambitious: the album is truly a fragrant pot-pourri of multiple sonorities. From the supremacy of strings to a tribute to punk funk, passing through operatic singing, without forgetting the pull of tropicalismo, with an unexpected dance-oriented finale.

The opening is percussive, chimed by xylophone and softened by violins ("Glass, Concrete, Stone"), before launching into a dazzling foray into operatic singing with Rufus Wainwright on "Au Fond du Temple Saint", taken from Bizet's "Les pêcheurs de perles", and, strictly in Italian, from Giuseppe Verdi's "La Traviata" ("Un Dì Felice, Eterea").

The neo-tropicalismo, tempered by melodious strings, becomes hyper-caloric ("Tiny Apocalypse"), and, as if realising it might prove hard to digest, pulls back with a nod to old-school funk ("Dialog Box"). Also enjoyable in the second half is the voice over acoustic guitar and violin that open "Pirates", giving way to nursery-rhyme-like "Glad". And the closer is a crowd-pleasing dance bonus track with guests of honour X-Press 2, after the excessive outpouring of strings from the Tosca Strings, who are almost the real protagonists of the whole record.

On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, Eno reunites the historic duo with David Byrne. But Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, billed as an "electronic gospel" record, falls short of expectations.

The weak point doesn't lie in its leaning toward pop, but in how that leaning was carried out: while the obsessive repetition of the title in the opening "Home", or the discreet harmonic openings of the title track, at least have a physiognomy of their own - albeit seasoned with banalities in both style and lyrics - the rhythmic choices of "Strange Overtones" can only be called embarrassing, as can the forced, juvenile arrangement of "Life Is Long" and the baffling stadium-chorus cadence of "One Fine Day". The only track that lives up to the stated electro-gospel intent is "Wanted For Life", a piece that, admittedly, goes nowhere in particular. As with the rest of the record, there's a persistent sense of unjustified grandiosity here too, one that isn't even backed up by the necessary interplay between songwriting and compositional elements: the former is shaky and out of focus, the latter dull and lacking in character, and only once ("I Feel My Stuff") do we glimpse an attempt at cohesion otherwise absent from the rest of the songs.

Whether recording an album with an ensemble of South American musicians or with the Tosca Strings, collaborating with Mogwai or Ryuichi Sakamoto - not to mention his rather successful forays into dance music with Thievery Corporation and, above all, X-Press 2's "Lazy", which topped the charts a few years back - Byrne has always had an unmistakable style, and has never been particularly concerned with following trends.

In 2010 we find him at work on Here Lies Love, a double album born out of a bizarre idea: a song cycle devoted to the controversial figure of Imelda Marcos, widow of the former Philippine dictator, and to her relationship with the woman who raised her, Estrella Cumpas. Poised between a concept album and a musical, this new work sees him team up with Norman Cook, known to the wider public for years as Fatboy Slim, but with a pop past of his own in Housemartins as well.

There's room not only for Latin flourishes, but also for electronic funk, a more traditional musical-style number (well delivered by Martha Wainwright), and a "Ladies In Blue" whose style strongly recalls a disco-music classic like Donna Summer's "Last Dance".

Countless guests (all women, with the exception of Steve Earle) took part in the project, successfully giving voice to the various characters encountered over the course of the album's 90-minute runtime. It falls to Florence Welch (Florence + the Machine) to open proceedings with the lovely title track, while Tori Amos proves particularly well-suited to the role of Imelda's mother in "You'll Be Taken Care Of". The already-mentioned Earle is entrusted with the "heart" of the first disc, taking on the role of Ferdinand Marcos in "A Perfect Hand" (it's a Cyndi Lauper in top form, instead, who documents the courtship between the two in "Eleven Days"). The presence of Kate Pierson, voice of the unforgettable B-52's, comes as no surprise, given that Byrne had already worked with the Athens band back in the early '80s. The performance of a soul great like Sharon Jones on "Dancing Together" is thoroughly convincing, as is Alice Russell, who takes on the role of an Imelda betrayed by her husband and bent on revenge in "Men Will Do Anything". It's less clear, though, why Byrne namechecks 50 Cent and the internet in the lyrics of the fierce "American Troglodyte" (which arrives right after "Please Don't", a track that, truth be told, isn't especially gripping despite being chosen as the lead single), given that the story is set before the Marcoses' exile. Still, this is one of the few off notes on an album that entertains and carries you along. It's clever, danceable, but it also makes you think.

An empathetic artist, a neurotic genius, a curious man, a grey-haired and fit sixty-something, rather than recycling and restoring the glories of new wave, Byrne studies, looks around, rides his bike, seeks out new fellow travelers and experiments with different combinations. Fascinated by world music, dispensing good advice via his intriguing radio channel, whose playlists easily stumble into an international carousel zigzagging between Caetano Veloso, Bjork and L'Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio, he has no qualms about collaborating with up-and-coming and not-so-new, shining talents.

After Fatboy Slim, it's the turn of Annie Clark, aka Saint Vincent, the beautiful, cultured and enterprising pop starlet he met three years earlier in New York, at a benefit concert. From their meeting comes Love This Giant (2012), an album once again centered on the theme of urban neurosis.

The promises are kept right from the start, with "Who", the single which, from its opening horns onward, announces the playfully funky spirit running through the whole album. A chance encounter on a road somewhere in the New York suburbs - as in the amusing promotional video, complete with Byrne-esque, hilarious dancing - the song is, lyrically, a meditation on the possible empathy of a purely chance meeting, rewinding the tape back to "Little Creatures" of more than 25 years ago.

The little creatures, hurled into the present, adapt immediately, polish up their intentions and, with new trinkets in the shape of saxophone, trombone and French horn, carry the conversation forward on "Dinner for Two". The taste for experimenting with any kind of sonic material doesn't leave gospel aside either, as in the intro to "I'm An Ape", while elsewhere there's no giving up the pleasure of a mildly syncopated pop-wave, as on "Lazarus", another duet and one of the album's finest moments.

True to himself, David Byrne hasn't forgotten that he's a devoted lover of world music, having gone as far as founding Luaka Bop, a delightful label devoted to all sorts of Latin sounds; the tribute is paid on the hyper-luminous and lush "The One Who Broke Your Heart", which, in a provocative touch - backed by a guest appearance from Antibalas and The Dap Kings, straight from the Daptone stable - would be entirely believable among the bonus tracks of a remastered edition of "Rei Momo".

The closing note is an adorable, romantically futuristic happy ending, a ballad for David alone, who doesn't hesitate to proudly display the signs of a splendid maturity, far removed from his old nihilism and dizzying love of cynicism ("Outside Of Space & Time"). For St. Vincent, the reference points are different and not slavishly copied, but simply made her own; among them, a lighter-touch Bjork ("Weekend In Dust") and, in the vocal delivery of the first forty seconds of "Ice Age", the pale, elegant complexion of Laurie Anderson.

Seen through the lens of a lopsided but inevitable comparison, David Byrne naturally remains the magnificent giant to love, and not merely by right of age, continuing to shine with his own light as a generous magnetic pole for a delightful and intriguing vestal.

More than thirty years on from "Talking Heads: 77", at a time when the present truly feels disconnected in its everyday workings, when our office becomes the favored site of our panic attacks, the television ready to burst from its own grotesque content, public spaces turned into little stagings of a traveling theater of the absurd, the planetary discotheque pulsing with sweat and silicone... when the doubt creeps in that we've unwittingly become an integral part of all this, we run to our room, and, if we're lucky, we'll blindly pull out "Remain In Light", the record that, even today, would dismiss any mild-mannered therapist without too much trouble.

Fourteen years after Grown Backwards, his last solo album from 2004, comes American Utopia, a choral work, a concept album featuring no shortage of guests, starting with his longtime collaborator Brian Eno, who co-writes the bulk of the tracks, alongside Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never, to name just a few.

The idea is to put together a short treatise on what America is today, in the grip of the aftereffects of a delusion of omnipotence rooted in its historic vocation for capitalism, reduced to a pathetic neo-liberal fashion through which desperate vitality is flaunted via a frayed socio-relational system clinging to the dream of a materialistic self-determination for all, light years removed from the reality of a profound unease, laced with neurosis and, at times, psychosis. One of the most genuinely interesting aspects is the tone in which Byrne recounts the stage on which this farce is played out: grotesque, hilarious, deeply learned.

Coming to the content, the album opens with "I Dance Like This", a cosmic, post-romantic, alienated ballad suspended between nervous piano à-la Radiohead, lunar clangs and alien choirs. "Everybody's Coming My House" is "I Zimbra" in the city, the millennial reincarnation of last century's sabbath-possessed revelers. "Every Day Is A Miracle" is like taking Matt Bianco's "More Than I Can Bear" and abandoning it in a South American club to jam with the locals. "This Is That", written by Daniel Lopatin, is a stream of consciousness in which everything is reduced to an impossibility – or an unwillingness – to entertain conceptual vagueness: “This is when/ This is now/ This is that/ This is how/ This is what/ This is then/ This is where”, recited like a mantra to oneself. In "Dog's Mind", where the gently electronic interplay with Eno returns, with barely any preamble, it turns out that men are sometimes like little dogs, cute and vain, gripped by an ontological void impossible to fill.

"Here", again written by Lopatin, closes the album with a cascade of electronic effects and voices from an interstellar Elsewhere that stretch out spatio-temporal perceptions on an intrapsychic, psychedelic journey in search of a dazzling pineal gland, unity within duality, a dialectical synthesis of light and shadow.

America is waiting for a message of some sort or another. Takin it again. Again! Again!

The stage debut of American Utopia opens a new phase for David Byrne: between TV appearances, collaborations with comedian John Mulaney, theatrical projects for Mala Gaonkar, the musician also finds time to take part in promoting the reissue of "Stop Making Sense" with his old bandmates.

The release of Who Is The Sky? (2025) comes down like a tombstone on fans' hopes for a new album, or at least a celebratory tour, from the Talking Heads camp. The intentions behind David Byrne's new album are plain to see: the twelve tracks are as many extroverted, enjoyable pop miniatures, and to that end the musician enlisted a seasoned producer, Tom Hull aka Kid Harpoon, and brought in the Ghost Train Orchestra, consolidating the album's chamber-pop, almost yacht-rock slant while letting the familiar exotic, funky influences of the past fade into the background.

The album's Achilles' heel isn't to be found in the high sugar content of "A Door Called No" or in the rich dose of euphoria and sunniness of "Everybody Laughs" — quite the opposite, in fact: the two tracks mentioned above, along with the more ambitious "The Avant-Garde", remain among the most noteworthy. The real obstacles to fully enjoying the album are the Van Dyke Parks-style flourishes of "Moisturizing Thing", the tired attempt to embrace indie-pop on the irritating "When We Are Singing" (David, why the meowing?), the ironic self-quotation of the otherwise pleasant "My Apartment Is My Friend", and the harmonic fatigue that seems to envelop almost the entire record ("What Is The Reason For It?", "I Met The Buddha At A Downtown Party", "Don't Be Like That").

As admirable as the reference points remain (theatre and the soundtracks of 1960s and 70s films), and although David Byrne hasn't shed his penchant for symbolic surrealism ("I Met The Buddha At A Downtown"), and while we appreciate the commendable coming out about his condition as a person on the autism spectrum ("She Explains Things To Me"), the record doesn't convince — not because the songs are overly jovial, but because of how sketchy the compositions are, graced with superb production yet lacking the former Talking Heads man's quirky genius. A multifaceted figure like the ex-Talking Head, however, has plenty of resources at his disposal, not least the ability to turn an album like Who Is The Sky? into a grand multimedia spectacle of feelings and everyday banality: should that happen, we won't hold back our applause for its vitality, but in the meantime this record slips into genteel oblivion.

Contributions by Raffaello Russo ("Everything That Happens Will Happen Today"), Alessandro Liccardo ("Here Lies Love"), Gianfranco Marmoro ("Who Is The Sky?")

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

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