David Byrne performing at a show in New York City in October.Emilio Herce/Supplied
As people took their seats at Massey Hall on Tuesday night, the stage was empty. No amplifiers, no microphone stands, no instruments, no sound monitors. Let’s call it a blank canvas, one David Byrne spent the next 105 minutes or so efficiently filling up with beats, ideas and multimedia.
The initial backdrop image was a moonscape. When Earth came into view, rising above the lunar horizon, Byrne identified it as heaven, “the only one we have.”
Making do with what he has is what Byrne is all about, musically and otherwise. The 73-year-old New Yorker is known to get around the city on a bicycle. (He’s even been spotted pedalling on Toronto Island in the past.) What the brainy polymath can’t carry on his bike or body, he doesn’t need.
That streamlining translates to his mobile, wireless band. As with his American Utopia tour in 2018 and subsequent Broadway residencies, keyboards and various percussion contraptions were strapped to the musicians by harnesses and headset microphones were used, allowing everyone to dance around the austere stage for what is as much a musical theatre production as a rock concert.
Byrne is a minimalist with big ideas, saying the most with the least. Though everything from him is possible, he knows everything is not necessary.
The tight, fun (and sometimes funny) concert was the first of three in Toronto, the only Canadian stop on Byrne’s tour to support his latest album, Who Is the Sky? He began with the old Talking Heads song about the celestial place above the sky: “The band in heaven, they play my favourite song / Play it one more time, play it all night long.”
The art-pop icons broke up with some bitterness in 1991 and there are no signs of a reunion any time soon. For fans of the group, Byrne’s shows are as close to heaven as they’ll get. Talking Head tunes on the set list included And She Was, Life During Wartime, Once in a Lifetime, the encore finale Burning Down the House and more.
Byrne and his 12-piece dancing band and singers all wore the same simple blue outfits. The music, old songs and new, was uniform as well: funky world-beat/killer bass line answers to the songwriter’s often existential lyrical dilemmas.
On the new album’s What is the Reason For It?, Byrne asked the same questions about peace, love and understanding posed long ago by Nick Lowe. And, of course, on Psycho Killer, he wondered, “qu’est-ce que c’est?” His answer, “Fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa-fa-fa,” was as good as any.
If there was a thematic through-line to the theatrical and danceable joy-fest, it had to do with a sense of place and the security of home. One of the images flashed was of Byrne’s abode, his safe spot during the pandemic. He played the new My Apartment Is My Friend and the Talking Heads classic This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody): “Home is where I want to be.”
On his new album, Byrne shrugs his shoulders on I Met The Buddha at a Downtown Party, about a guru who gives in and decides to enjoy life’s pastries: “He said, ‘I had to retire from that enlightenment biz, I don’t have the answers, and I never did / They think I can help them, but I’m not that smart, so here, have a piece of this blue blueberry tart.’”
The big question Byrne gets these days is about the possibility of a Talking Heads reunion. The fresh, upbeat invention of the American Utopia concerts and the current tour is all the answer Byrne needs to give. Why go back, when he is very clearly exactly where he wants to be?