‘And as things fell apart / Nobody paid much attention,” David Byrne sings with a gentle shake of his head during (Nothing But) Flowers, Talking Heads’ hymn to human complacency and self-interest. That line had tooth again in 1988. In 2026, it’ll take your hand off as quickly as have a look at you. But Byrne doesn’t oversell it. His newest spectacle isn’t a telling-off; it’s a reminder of what happiness felt like, of what pleasure in motion appears like.
Surrounded by a big ensemble in matching blue fits – dancers who sing, percussionists who dance, guitarists who additionally shred on a violin – he continues his career-long obsession with blurring the road between stay show and theatrical art-piece. At the rear of the stage, a sequence of giant concave screens are a continuous supply of marvel. Alongside Strange Overtones, the solar units on a cityscape offered in deep focus, particulars popping into the space, whereas a pogoing Byrne, picked out in blue towards saturated orange during Once in a Lifetime, provides an exciting punk jolt amid a meticulously deliberate complete.
With a set listing constructed round elastic bass and polyrhythms, from Talking Heads’ Slippery People to What Is the Reason for It?, a brass-driven groover from his latest LP Who Is the Sky?, there’s a feeling of perpetual movement as our bodies flit from one aspect of the stage to the opposite. Byrne is amongst them, required to hit his marks like everyone else, and that egalitarian spirit is key in delivering his message of collective resolve.
Throughout a hideously apropos Life During Wartime, footage from ICE raids bleeds into the sector, whereas the insularity of the pandemic is a recurring theme, notably when the screens re-create his dwelling for My Apartment Is My Friend. Byrne’s response is noise, laughter and neighborhood. It’s stunning to see the viewers pulled from their seats – slowly at first, then all of sudden – by the guitar stabs of This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody), their voices turning one thing lithe and delicate right into a collective shout alongside. “Love and kindness are a form of resistance,” Byrne says at one level. You’d hope so.
