David Byrne
Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Brisbane
Saturday, January 17th
David Byrne has been pushing the boundaries of live performance for half a century. Tonight is no exception. Returning to Australasia for the first time since 2018, Byrne’s Who Is the Sky? tour begins with birdsong filling the Entertainment Centre. There’s no mixtape prior, just the gentle insistence of nature. Then a familiar voice comes through the P.A., and it’s Byrne himself delivering some light housekeeping rules with an added encouragement to dance. The voice is so calming, the man could host a guided meditation series.
The stage itself reflects the theatrical nature of what’s to follow. We’re looking inside a giant box and the landscape is lunar. Byrne emerges in an orange jumpsuit and performs Talking Heads’ near-minimalist masterpiece “Heaven”. As images of Earth bloom across the rear screens, Byrne gently underlines the point: this fragile blue planet is the real heaven — and preserving it is a collective responsibility.
Also clad in matching orange jumpsuits, Byrne is joined by up to twelve singers and instrumentalists. An evolution of 2018’s American Utopia tour, the ensemble remains untethered from amplifiers and guitar leads, free to roam the stage and fully inhabit Steven Hoggett’s precise, kinetic choreography.
There’s a subtle political undercurrent to the show that steadily gathers force as the night unfolds. Byrne still bears the scars of the pandemic, but characteristically he’s transformed them into art. The idea of people truly connecting recurs throughout the night. And — taking a cue from filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell — he refers to “kindness and love as a form of resistance”.
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Byrne’s setlist merges lyrical themes that collapse the distance between the mundane and the surreal. Moisturiser, his apartment, feeling horny and the accidental poetry of T-shirt slogans all come into play.
The show is a mix of newer material and Talking Heads’ classics. “Everybody Laughs” and his collaboration with Brian Eno, “Strange Overtones, are early highlights from his solo catalogue.
And “She Was”, complete with a retelling of how the song came to be, is wonderful, as are “(Nothing But) Flowers” and the song that really gets the house on its feet and moving, “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)”.
As band members come and go from the stage, the hi-def visuals move from cornfields to the big city and beyond. For “My Apartment Is My Friend”, the black drop is literally Byrne’s abode.
Mid-show highlights include “Like Humans Do”, “Independence Day” and the primal groove of Talking Heads’ “Slippery People”. There’s a beautiful reinvention of Paramore’s “Hard Times” before the late Arthur Russell’s arrangement of “Psycho Killer”. It’s the first time the song has appeared in a Byrne set in almost twenty years, and the interpretation — with its machine-like pulse — is transcendent.
The show’s politics are laid bare as the big screens give way to imagery reflecting the turbulence currently dominating the USA — and the world — before Byrne launches into a mighty “Life During Wartime”. The momentum continues as he slips into full Southern minister mode for “Once in a Lifetime”.
After the crescendo, Byrne brings everything back down to a moment of intimacy as he guides the ensemble through “Everybody’s Coming to My House”. Moments later, he and the group re-enter the stratosphere with “Burning Down the House”.
You won’t find a more ambitious production that can play to an audience this big and make it work. Despite the size of the venue, Byrne pulls off the magic trick of somehow transforming a heart-tapping art installation of epic proportion into something that, by the end, feels like your lounge room.
At the heart of the night, joy triumphs over cynicism. Bravo, Mr Byrne.