Not quite flawless, but loveliness abounds at David Byrne show

MUSIC
David Byrne
TikTok Entertainment Centre (ICC), January 21
Reviewed by GEORGE PALATHINGAL
★★★★½

Loveliness abounds at a David Byrne show. We know this from our extraordinary shared experience in this same room in 2018 but, you know, some stuff has happened since then.

We learn on this night, to some extent, how the pandemic affected the former frontman of Talking Heads, the band that all but defined NYC art rock from the late ’70s to the mid-’80s. Byrne clearly tried to process some of those feelings on last year’s Who Is the Sky? album, so here he continues the exercise, with some of those songs joining the tried-and-true favourites from his brilliant career.

In a nutshell, he’s still seeking connection, and seeing him perform remains among the most life-affirming ways to find it.

Thanks to his exquisite use of screens and lights, we spend time on the moon, looking down at Earth (for the maudlin but warm Heaven); in neon-hued streets to a seamy funk soundtrack of Houses in Motion; at the (hardly hellish, unsurprisingly stylish) abode where Byrne was stuck during lockdown (the jaunty folly of My Apartment Is My Friend); and more cleverly realised locales.

There’s other visual trickery, and sometimes the gimmicks supersede the songs (and distract you from the lesser ones; hello, Independence Day) – but more often than not the aesthetics emphatically enhance them.

This includes the band, a riveting, dozen-strong collective roaming the stage along with Byrne in perfectly choreographed harmony, variously playing their assigned instruments and/or dancing with infectious joy. We join them on our feet, of course, especially for the Talking Heads classics: the meticulously, blissfully building This Must Be the Place; the ever-dizzying perfection of Once in a Lifetime; the cathartic euphoria of Burning Down the House.

At the risk of being That Guy, this tour is not quite as spectacular as the flawless 2018 show – a version of which you can see in Spike Lee’s 2020 concert film American Utopia – though that’s an opinion largely based on my feelings on the likeable but merely fine songs of Who Is the Sky? ousting others I’d rather see and hear. But a David Byrne performance is still quite like nothing else out there, in most of the very best ways.