“Toe Jam” shows off the band’s magnificent skills with irresistible fun. A performance of Byrne’s solo track “Lazy” turns the song into a near celebration of doing your own thing in an oppressive world. He evokes the Dadaists before breaking into an exhilarating rendition of “I Zimbra,” discussing how Dada founder Hugo Ball believed in using “nonsense” speak to challenge a world gone mad. Byrne turns Talking Heads favorites like “Once in a Lifetime” into renewed, grandiose numbers where his vocal power soars as well as his sense of the theatrical. Artificial divisions, prejudices and inhibitions seem to dissipate inside the Hudson Theatre. What Byrnes and his fellow musicians create on stage as captured by Lee is a form of utopian freedom. It all comes together to envelop the viewer and audience into the sheer joy of creativity.īeginning with the title, “American Utopia” can mean many things, but none without powerful merit. Byrne and his band mix songs from the “American Utopia” album with Talking Heads classics and selections from Byrne’s solo work. What follows is a show where music and ideas combine as pure expression, flowing from theme to theme, sometimes explicitly made, other times evoked through the songs. Yet these cells also connect us all, because it’s part of our collective anatomy. Byrne commences the show with “Here,” then shares about the intricacies of the human brain and how we lose cells as we grow older. They have no need for elaborate set designs to distract the eyes of the audience. Byrne and the musicians and dancers accompanying him are dressed in simple, grey suits. The set is bare, consisting of mostly grey backgrounds and light curtains. Staged at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre in New York City, “American Utopia” is David Byrne’s celebration of various elements, ranging from diversity to the sheer power of live human expression. Lee’s cameras filmed “American Utopia” performances in late 2019 and early 2020, just before the pandemic would have rendered such a feat impossible. Lee is not out to simply film Byrne’s stage performance, but to combine its art with his craft, thus transforming it into its own, stunning piece. This is in essence the third reiteration of the concept, and also a fresh rebirth. In 2013 Talking Heads frontman David Byrne made an album with the legendary Brian Eno, “American Utopia,” which received strong reviews even before Byrne turned it into a hit Broadway performance. Spike Lee ’s dazzling chronicle of “ David Byrne’s American Utopia ” also proves a great filmmaker can capture that very feeling. In Spike Lee-Directed ‘American Utopia,’ David Byrne Powerfully Transcends the StageĪ profound live show can become a transcendental experience, combining performance and sound into something akin to secular spiritualism. Discovering the Island of Cuba: Havana and Beyond.Aspen: America’s Most Luxurious Mountain Town.Florence, Italy: What to Do and Where to Stay in the Heart of Tuscany.A world tour kicks off the same month that Byrne has called “the most ambitious show I’ve done since the shows that were filmed for Stop Making Sense. The cover art for American Utopia is by ‘outsider artist’ Purvis Young and the album itself will be released by Todomundo/Nonesuch Records on 9 March 2018. We look around and we ask ourselves – well, does it have to be like this? Is there another way? These songs are about that looking and that asking.” Many of us, I suspect, are not satisfied with that world – the world we have made for ourselves. Speaking about the album, Byrne said: “These songs don’t describe an imaginary or possibly impossible place but rather attempt to depict the world we live in now. The ten track album includes the song Everybody’s Coming To My House, which was co-written with Brian Eno. The record forms part of a larger multi-media project dubbed Reasons To Be Cheerful, an ongoing series curated by Byrne of ‘hopeful writings’, photos, music, and lectures – all themed around optimism David Byrne will issue American Utopia next month, his first solo studio album since 2004’s Grown Backwards.
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