David Byrne [performing songs written with Brian Eno] - Royal Festival Hall, London - 12/4/09
5/5
By: Thomas Hannan
As soon as it was announced that David Byrne was to perform a show full of songs he'd worked on with Brian Eno - drawing the set list solely from the three Talking Heads LPs Eno produced and co-wrote sections of (the holy trinity of More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music and Remain in Light) and the pair's couple of 'duet' albums (the drastically ahead of its time My Life In the Bush of Ghosts and the actually pretty great Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, released last year) - it was clear that this was an event not to be missed. What wasn't initially clear was why - why was it happening, why now, and for what purpose? To cash in on an under-promoted, last record? To admit that without Brian Eno's input, Byrne might not be lauded as the genius he is today? Just for the hell of it?
Byrne had said that the whole thing was an exercise (you do wonder if he does anything that he doesn't call an 'exercise') to see if there was any cohesion in the work he'd done with Eno throughout their careers - bearing in mind the pair hadn't worked together in 30 years, before Everything That Happens... If there was any running theme to their work, Byrne thought he could find it by performing a bunch of it live. Strange logic. And it turns out that thematically, the only thing that seems to me to link all these songs together is their unavoidable brilliance. As through threads go, it's an enviable one. But the great thing about their work together has been how doggedly inventive it has been - the common theme is pushing one's own artistic mindset in to new places. It's change - change, and brilliance. Sonically, there seems very little to me to bind the polyrhythmic and sample-heavy My Life in the Bush of Ghosts work with the lush gospel harmonies and pop structures of Everything That Happens. Do I just not get it?
I think I do get it, because I love it all. Yeah, even the new stuff we're eased in with - the opening 'Strange Overtones', despite not sharing the place in history its fellow songs in the set own, is a beauteous highlight of the evening as a whole. Oddly, despite the co-writer credit for Eno (who doesn't perform with Byrne tonight but rumour has it is here, somewhere, like the wind...), it bears far more resemblance to Talking Heads tracks he never worked on, such as those on Little Creatures and Naked. It's another anomalous result on the graph for Byrne's coherence experiment, but a fine song all the same.
The opening tune, as with all those that follow it, is absolutely nailed by Byrne's band, a troupe of session musicians all playing with the passion and feeling of a chanting chain gang, despite the fact that they're completely under Byrne's conductorship the whole time. The band are on it - as is Byrne's voice, which has matured in to a thing of spine tingling wonder. But this isn't just a musical show. It's a performance art piece as much as anything. Three highly skilled dancers spend almost the entire show throwing each other about the stage, spinning the band members round and round on office chairs, leaping gracefully over a guitar-playing Byrne's head (which is no mean feat, dude's tall!). It could be annoying if it wasn't such an inextricable part of the show. Everything's choreographed meticulously. Not just the work of the dancers, but the lighting show, the interchangeable stage positions, the fact that everyone's wearing brilliant white - nothing's left to chance.
Which sounds like the dullest, most laborious thing imaginable, right? But no. My view of David Byrne as a genius with only one flaw, that being a perceived preference for precision over passion, was completely wrong. David Byrne is funny as f**k. There's such a good natured feeling to all of this - David apologises for taking too long fiddling with pedals in between songs ("I was just checking my email..."), a woman at the back screams out "I'm just so glad to see you!" to warm applause from her fellow audience and a huge grin from Byrne, a man who later delights in the departure of the front row of photographers so that those who want to dance can get a little closer to him and his amazing band and shake their stuff. Calculated performance art can be a right giggle.
Those who want to dance eventually number the whole crowd. Sure, it starts off all a little polite - people nod heads in their chairs to 'I Zimbra' and a silent tear rolls down my cheek during a terrifyingly sublime rendition of 'Heaven' - but something magical happens during 'Crosseyed and Painless'. A few people in the front few rows stand up and start dancing. Then the rows behind them. Within seconds, people are practically swinging strangers from the royal box by their ankles. The whole place is jumping. You're in the Royal Festival Hall, and it's kicking off. 'Life During Wartime' might have everyone rapturously singing "this ain't no party, this ain't no disco!" at the tops of their lungs, but it is. It is.
And it doesn't stop from there. 'Once In A Lifetime' is given a rendition so fine it actually lives up to the lofty imagined brilliance of its live performance I've constructed throughout my life of never having witnessed it - which is quite the (overly verbose) compliment. 'Born Under Punches' rhythmically confounds along with the Bush of Ghosts material in a way that promotes even weirder dancing from this crowd of old and young, and he even dons a tutu for an incendiary encore's rendition of 'Burning Down The House'. That was cheating of him, as Eno had f**k all to do with that song. But by now, he could have dropped 'Road To Nowhere', 'This Must Be the Place', 'Psycho Killer', 'Radio Head'... nobody would have cared. Notions of concept, coherence, collaboration... out the window. We're burning down the house.
Despite the fact that three encores was milking it a little (after 'Burning Down The House' I doubt anyone was exactly gagging for the title track from Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, but what the hell), it still goes straight to the top end of the list of the best live shows (to call this a 'gig' seems demeaning) I've ever seen, further cementing these songs as all time favourites. The only thing challenging it for gig of the year so far is Dirty Projectors last week, collaborators of Byrne's indeed (no coincidence), and all they've really got on him is the shock of the new - hardly his fault. Talking Heads, David Byrne, Brian Eno; all these entities have at times had the capacity to come across as somewhat robotic in the past. But tonight, their collectively brilliant beating heart was exposed as something that pumps nothing but joy.
Artists in this article: David Byrne, Talking Heads
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment