Can anything ever live up to a cherished memory? Can anything be as good as it was in your youth? Can David Byrne deliver a show that can live up to my adolescent love of his former band Talking Heads? Heading in to RAC Arena tonight there’s a real sense of trepidation, but trepidation of the good kind. The kind reserved for formative heroes. When I first discovered Talking Heads in the dusty basement of my local record store I remember staying transfixed for the 40-odd minutes it took to play through ‘More Songs About Buildings and Food.’ It was a real musical shift for me, not so much a wandering from the path as a run deep into the woods.
Talking Heads weren’t just a band you just liked; they were a band that quietly unwound the notions of how you understood music. New wave, punk, art rock, funk, world music – it all collided in a way that felt alien at the time and even less obvious in hindsight. Weeks later Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues were the two records that hit me hardest, albums that defied everything I thought rock music was supposed to be. But I was just a kid in a small town a world away from New York where the magic had happened years before.
Stop Making Sense may have been the concert film of my youth but to be honest it’s not a patch on the spectacle that unfold before a packed Arena tonight. Byrne was already etched into the DNA long before he ever stepped on this stage, before the birdsong and the spoken announcement.
Opening with “Heaven” felt like both a blessing and a deep breath. It’s a song that sounds so fresh even after all this time. Byrne has always understood pacing, and this was him easing us in gently before the grin widened and the body started moving. Simple, melancholy, sparse and equally moving.
“Everybody Laughs” followed juxtaposed perfectly between “Heaven” and the next and immediately at odds – joyous, twitchy, and wonderfully, though gently unsettling — before “And She Was” threatened an early roof raising incident. From there, the setlist unfolded like a scribbled ode to an artist’s work, a missive to Byrne’s restless creativity: “Houses in Motion,” “(Nothing But) Flowers,” but “This Must Be the Place” especially told a story in themselves – songs that have all aged impossibly well, songs once heard never forgotten, and all wonderfully anti-nostalgia, all living beautifully in the now realised by the cast of musicians pacing and dancing and stomping and striding the stage. The ensemble tonight was glorious to behold and the visuals crisp in the eye, opaque in meaning and artistically thought provoking.
Visually, the show veered between the poetic and the pointed. Icebergs melting into lush green forests, then slamming hard into the stark contrast of modern America — slogans flashing like “Make America Gay Again,” “No Kings,” and the quietly radical message printed on Byrne’s “T-shirt”. It wasn’t meant to direct you, or proselytize, just make you wonder about the strange times we live in. Love and kindness as a form of resistance. The most punk thing you can do right now, he seemed to suggest, is remain human. Remain open. Remain joyful in the face of authoritarian grey.
Byrne spoke — gently, oddly, but always measured and deliberate – about singing to strangers in the pandemic through open windows in Italy, about those same Italians singing most of all on Liberation Day and celebrating freedom from fascism. You make your own threads connecting times and places…
“Like Humans Do” arrived with a simple mantra — breathing in, breathing out — underscored by visuals of lines pulsing behind him and the musical entourage. Red velvet drapes framed “Don’t Be Like That,” before the stage washed blue, the whole thing feeling theatrical without ever tipping into self-indulgence. Some art may even have been for art’s sake.
There was humour too. Stories of learning to cook Indian and Mexican food during lockdown, of grocery shopping, of seeing a woman growing potatoes at another woman. All fed into the wonderfully literal “My Apartment Is My Friend.” A pandemic-era anthem: survival through routine, curiosity, and small joys, whilst we all stepped visually inside Byrne’s apartment. Byrne has always been fascinated by the everyday; and the pandemic seems to have opened up new windows and accents to his observations.
One of the night’s more unexpected turns was a rendition of Paramore’s “Hard Times.” On paper, it’s an odd choice. In practice, Byrne funked it up, bent it sideways, and made it sound like one of his own! “Slippery People,” followed as an absolutely sublime reminder that Talking Heads could groove harder than almost anyone in the ’80s — and Byrne still can.
The final run was beautifully framed and unsurpassable for a fan: “Psycho Killer” crackled with tension (Byrne already setting us up with a quip about him being mistaken for Anthony Perkins at a Jazz Festival many years ago when his hair was another colour). But that just set us up for “Life During Wartime” which turned the room into a regular concert crowd for a moment, all smiles and cheers and whistles and song! “Once in a Lifetime” saw the stage glow orange, guitar chords smashed and flickered, hypnotic and overwhelming as Byrne prowled the stage, the ensemble behind him locked in like a perfectly tuned machine. Choreographed beautifully, stuttering in Art School glory. As you scanned every man and woman on stage, it was impossible not to think: this is not just a concert, this is a performance. Very New York. Very alive. Assumingly unassuming.
The encore sealed it for most. “Everybody’s Coming to My House,” arranged with gospel weight and Ethiopian Baptist inflection (according to Byrne’s story) was transformed into something communal and deeply moving. The piano crept in, the bass was rolling, claps spread like a Gospel choir. Earlier Byrne spoke of hearing people talking whilst he was out cycling during the pandemic, the wonder of outdoor restaurants reopening after all the dense quietness. But the pandemic was just the catalyst for the realisation of the simple truth that despite all our differences and all the madness, people like being with other people.
“Burning Down the House” closed the night. For me echoing all that I thought that song could be played live when I first heard Stop Making Sense. Tonight though it sounds and feels freer, untrapped by age or context, perfectly placed on a glorious orange-lit stage of wonder, drums, excitement and indulgence. Music can conjure memories and emotions and transport you in time, but the best music adds new life to all of those emotions you cherish with every new listen.
When you take your Dad to a concert and it takes you some persuading as he never really liked Talking Heads when you played it too loud and too often as a kid, and he tells you at the end that he loved it, it was spectacular, that it was a ‘real show.’ You know then that the generations have collided, and he understands what you always understood about this music. That expectation and immersion often fight each other, but when you let the music flood in and let go of the side of that beautiful deep pool, real magic can happen.
It’s hard to sum up a show like tonight’s closing date of David Byrne’s ‘Who Is The Sky’ Tour of Australia. Some concerts are more than you imagine. You bring in your memories and your connection to the music but walk away with even more. Bryne is one of our great artists, not just for the music but for the vision, he’s not great because he wrote a bunch of cool tunes, he’s great because of what he sees and how that vision can change when he appreciates other’s interpretations of his work like his story about only really understating his song ‘Everybody’s Coming to My House’ when he heard another arrangement of it.
Tonight we got a glimpse into Byrne’s life, dancing through green forest and into the streets of the world, and it’s a world of stark contrast. Byrne would never be so obtuse as to force his view on a roomful of strangers, and it’s the imagery that flows behind him that opens your eyes and minds. Just like his music that makes you ask questions, the visuals behind him did the same, as do the stories. You feel that every component had its place, but it’s gentle nudges mostly. So whether it’s a glimpse into his apartment, or stories of learning to cook Indian and Mexican food, it all matters. The world is a beautiful place but parts of it leave a bitter taste, it’s up to you to accept and question in equal measure.
As a concert, this was special, and so much more than a rock show with all we usually accept: stripped away, no amplifiers, no leads, no mic stands, everything portable and dancing about the stage. Don’t ever stop moving David. Show of the year in January? It just could be…
SETLIST
Heaven | Everybody Laughs | And She Was | Strange Overtones | Houses in Motion | T Shirt | (Nothing But) Flowers | This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) | What Is the Reason for It? | Like Humans Do | Don’t Be Like That | Independence Day | Slippery People | Moisturizing Thing | My Apartment Is My Friend | Hard Times (Paramore cover) | Psycho Killer | Life During Wartime | Once in a Lifetime
Encore:
Everybody’s Coming to My House | Burning Down the House
