“There she is — our heaven, the only one we have,” David Byrne said, at the second of a three-night, sold-out run Wednesday night at Toronto’s Massey Hall, after playing Talking Heads’ “Heaven” and pointing to the satellite image of planet Earth on the giant, curved LED screen for his Who Is The Sky? Tour, named after his brand new solo album.
“Congratulations humanity, we made it,” read the sign on the backdrop at the end of the performance. We’re not so sure about that grand declaration but the ever-inventive 73-year-old art-rock pioneer, a true original, is all about optimism these days and has created a live show that if it doesn’t leave you smiling and energized, you’re dead inside.
The 1979 song, apparently inspired by a bar of the same name, became something else entirely in this context, a message: heaven is not up there, but here, through the beauty of the landscape, the cityscape, personal interconnection, music, dance, fun…and we need to take stock of that for our sanity amid the insanity and cruelty of what is going on right now. Well, at least that’s what I read into it.
The New York-based Scotsman whose family moved to Hamilton, Ontario, when he was two, before going Stateside, made his politics clear with just a few inclusions in his show: real-life footage of the brutality of the ICE arrests when he sang the Talking Heads classic “Life During Wartime” and slogans like “Make America Gay Again” and “No Kings” on the screen for the new song “T-shirt.”
Other than that, his entire hour-and-forty-five minute show was fun, fun, fun; a fitness class for people who can’t keep up, with choreographed dance moves you might have tried with your friends in public school, and a characteristically inventive backing group of musicians, dancers and singers whose colourful instruments (from keyboards to hand drums) were affixed around their necks so they could move and groove constantly, along with the boss. Kinetic is a good word for it. They did not stop.
The other simple but unique visual element is that everyone was dressed the same as Byrne, head-to-toe — yes, even the shoes — in monochromatic blue. Just something that pulls the show together.
The set list is largely unchanged from city to city, comprised of a good chunk of Talking Heads material, which, of course, makes the audience happy, top heavy in the set with “And She Was,” “Houses in Motion,” “(Nothing but) Flowers” and “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” then loading up again towards the end with “Slippery People,” “Psycho Killer,” the aforementioned “Life During Wartime,” “Once in a Lifetime” and the grand finale, “Burning Down The House.”
In between, he covered Paramore’s “Hard Times” — singer Hayley Williams is on the new album, featured on “What Is The Reason For It” — and played his collaboration with Brian Eno, “Strange Overtones,” along with other new songs, “My Apartment Is My Friend,” performed in front of a photo of his real apartment in New York with an enviable book shelf; the humorous “I Met Buddha at a Downtown Party,” and snappy plea “Don’t Be Like That.” The 21-song set list ends up half Talking Heads material.
Like his last show, America Utopia, this could do a stint on Broadway. The Who Is The Sky? Tour did include four shows at Radio City Music Hall but perhaps when he’s finished taking it around the world. Some of the dance moves could also inspire a TikTok craze.
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