David Byrne puts on one of the finest concerts seen in ages – and all utterly wireless
David Byrne’s Tuesday night performance at RAC Arena was a truly heartwarming and utterly sublime affair. It literally had the crowd, including Cream staff, dancing in the aisles. Such a spellbinding multifaceted performance, it would be cheap to think of it as merely a ‘gig’, in fact it was agreed between key reviewer and the editor that this was one of the best concerts we’ve been to in the past few years.
Touring partly in promotion of his latest album, Who Is The Sky?, Byrne was accompanied by the talented Ghost Train Orchestra, part backing band, part dance group and all, funnily enough, dressed in orange suiting that kind of connoted prison boiler suits. Yet freer on stage a band couldn’t be.
The players, in fact, performed completely wirelessly – moving about the stage freely, occasionally in cool choreographed unison, but mostly in freeform.
Together, they played a selection of David’s solo work, along with iconic Talking Heads singles such as (Nothing But) Flowers, Psycho Killer, Burning Down The House, and of course the perennial hit, Once In A Lifetime.
Surprisingly, many of the solo tracks, like Apartment and Everybody Laughs, sounded better live, prompting us to want to later go off and experience the new album in fuller familiarity. This goes to show David’s immense talent as a live performer and his eye for supporting talent, especially when most other bands struggle to reproduce their newer studio sounds.
I have always admired David Byrne for his legendary, groundbreaking work with Talking Heads, a group that pioneered nu wave, blending punk, art-rock, funk, and world music into a full, rich, singular sound. However, watching him live, I fell in love with David Byrne all over again, not just for his artistry, but also for his folksy, humanist vignettes and backstories to songs that showed a deeply personal side. My favourite was the wry story behind the inspiration for And She Was, when in high school, David was fascinated by a girl who radiated happiness. A happiness that, upon his investigation, turned out to be LSD-fueled.
No detail was too small to warrant attention – even the aforementioned orange garb appeared to a connote a kind of US prison uniform, part of a series of deft and subtle political statements coming from a country being run by the mad orange man himself. Given what is going on in the US and most of the rest of the world at the moment – futile wars, international disagreements, censorship of free – the orange suiting was a brave artistic statement.
David’s care and concern for his fellow humans were obvious from his many comments, but the one that stood out the most was “Love and kindness are the most punk things you can do right now,” and you know what? “Love and kindness are the new forms of resistance.”
Before going to the show, seeing the press images, I didn’t know what to expect. Not being able to see the usual blatant cables leading to Marshall stacks and lights up ahead, I was worried I we’d be subjected to lip-synching. What the audience experienced was the complete opposite. An affair that would have taken infinitely more planning and far more technical prowess than a usual gig. It was an integrated work of pure art. The set-up was fascinating. Musicians harnessed their wireless equipment, including drums and synths, whilst doing choreography, without missing a note or beat.
It was even more than this, combining visual art on giant digital screens that not only complemented but fed into the onstage show. All of which can only be described as pure art-pop wizardry.
My only criticism of the show is that I wish the encore had gone on for longer. Which is pretty selfish of me, given the set went for two hours without a break.
At the end of the night, I left with a sense that not only is David Byrne a generationally talented musician, but a living work of art and all-around beautiful human. Thanks so much Mr Byrne. Stay beautiful.
Photography by Antonino Tati.
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