Dressed from head to foot in iridescent orange, David Byrne and his 12-piece backing band look as if they’re about to burst into flames. On a vast, empty stage – uncluttered by amplifiers, microphones or any of the usual things that anchor a live performance – the former Talking Heads frontman is still full of twitchy energy.
Thankfully, there’s no spontaneous combustion. The template for tonight’s spectacle remains the legendary Stop Making Sense tour of 1984 – via American Utopia – where the show is built in increments. It starts slowly with Heaven, from Talking Heads’ 1979 album Fear of Music, a song that has lost none of its existential power.
If the 73-year-old singer and polymath is agnostic about the afterlife, he cares passionately about the here and now. The first visual backdrop we see is of the Earth, “the only planet we’ve got”. Over the course of two hours at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, what fans get feels like a ticket to watch the world burn.
On Heaven, he’s joined by three core members of his band: Ray Suen on violin (later, guitar), Kely Pinheiro on cello (later, bass) and Daniel Mintseris, playing a synthesiser worn around his waist. Afterwards, other musicians file on, with various percussionists also wearing bits of kit.
It allows the entire troupe to perform more like a marching band. With nothing tied down, everyone is in perpetual motion. Behind them, video screens project them in a variety of settings. On (Nothing But) Flowers, they’re in an empty department store, then a cornfield; on the heaving funk of Slippery People, they’re being tossed around in the ocean.
The band is impressively multi-racial and gendered, a theme for the night. “What if we all judged people by their appearances?” Byrne asks rhetorically. There’s an instant reply: “You’re very sexy, David!” Briefly, he breaks character and cracks up, then parries that that is the perfect example of what he’s talking about. Appearances can be deceptive.
He also tells us that punk is all about love and kindness these days. I’m not so sure about that – to me, it sounds suspiciously like the hippies who deluded themselves that handing out flowers would beat Nixon. As Trump’s deputy chief-of-goons Stephen Miller reminded us, we now live in a world “governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power”.
But we all need a little hope, and Byrne’s humanity is endearing. What’s surprising is his vulnerability. On My Apartment Is My Friend (one of a brace of songs from his new album, Who Is the Sky?), the video screens give us a grand tour of his New York City pad, a place which has seen the best and worst of him. He admits to living alone, and feeling it.
On an older solo song, T-shirt – an ironic paean to another type of identity politics, where branding is a form of bonding – we get pointed slogans. “Make America Gay Again” brings cheers, “Everyone Watches Women’s Sports” laughter. It’s safe to assume Byrne is unlikely to be playing the renamed Trump-Kennedy Centre any time soon.
These solo songs may not be what most of the crowd have come for, but they don’t disrupt the momentum of a superbly paced and choreographed show. No one has cause to complain when nearly half the set is made up of Talking Heads classics, with This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) the first to bring fans to their feet.
After Byrne, the star of the show throughout is Pinheiro, whose playing is the fulcrum of everything. Far more than just replicating Tina Weymouth’s original parts, she brings a harder groove to Houses in Motion, with a new double-time coda. Later, she commands the spotlight again, using cello as a lead instrument on Psycho Killer.
The most volatile moment of the set is Life During Wartime, arguably the most prescient and unnerving song of the punk/new wave era ever written. “The sound of gunfire off in the distance / I’m getting used to it now,” Byrne sings, as footage of ICE squads and New York City cops facing off with protesters plays behind him
This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco. It’s terrifyingly real.
While Byrne plays, at least there’s a little time for dancing and lovey-dovey. Burning Down the House is the closer, and as it explodes, it reminds us to watch out – you might get what you’re after. It’s a spectacular show. But the spectacle is nothing less than the incineration of the American dream.
