“David Byrne’s American Utopia” (yes, that David Byrne of Talking Heads fame who would allegedly come find and kill us if we typed THE Talking heads) comes at the perfect time and conjunction to HBO.
When we are all (hopefully) still shuttered in our domiciles binging on copious works of art, the Talking Heads frontman’s ballistic Broadway debut comes straight to our living rooms full of conspicuous contemplative discourse about…well…humanity in the days we are living in. As an added bonus, Spike Lee lends his directorial eye to Byrne’s utopian masterpiece that not only revisits Talking Heads hits of yore, but also debuts new tracks like “I Dance Like This” that are part Nine Inch Nails industrial nightmare and “Bullet,” a soliloquy to a stray gunshot. Both songs from his 2018 album produced with Brian Eno received the performance art treatment.
Louisianans will peer closer to their television sets at Chris Giarmo, a New Orleans inhabitant who has lent his performance talents to the sold out Hudson Theater stage of NYC. Giarmo has all the stylings of Tony Award-winning Alan Cummings in his 1998 Cabaret performance directed by Sam Mendes but sans BDSM gear. Giarmo holds his own in a polyester grey suit with thick eye shadow adapting to the Byrne dress code. And we can’t even touch on his melodica skills in this piece.
It should also be noted that Byrne performed his avant garde musical hodge-podge right here in the Crescent City during Jazz Fest 2018. Perhaps one enhancement to the Spike Lee televised program is the addition of Byrne’s message about the importance of voting—he struts and frets barefoot upon the stage with the effervescent theme of American politics quite literally underfoot. The weight of the message conveyed at the 2018 Jazz Fest by Janelle Monáe’s spotlight-stealing performance is heavy in the Lee-directed special. Monáe managed to end the live performance in 2018 by listing the names of Black lives who have tragically lost under systemic racism. But Byrne assures his audience he has her blessing, as a white man, to sing the song she has composed. The cast belts out Monáe’s requiem for Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, and others in dizzying Broadway-spectacularity.
Such is life in 2020.
Also of note is that the instruments in the performance are completely untethered. Byrne asks in the video, “What if we eliminate everything from the stage except the stuff we care about the most? What would be left the most…it would be us…us and you…and that’s what the show is.”
Some beats of the streamed version hit like a friendlier “Ted Talk.” David Byrne is earnest and courteous with his audience at all times. He’s good enough to call out his internationally diverse band performers who can as easily execute 6/8 timing as they can the saccharine smiles of Broadway Triple Threats. And other critics have drawn a rightful parallel to the ensemble performance style of New Orleans music groups.
At the end of the day, this is a Broadway performance directed by Spike Lee, starring David Byrne, featuring a lot of instrumentalists and performers in gray suits, barefoot yet Second Line style upon one of America’s most prestigious stages that may or may not survive past the year that has been 2020. One would be remiss to not compare the performance of “Burning Down the House” to a Second Line parade on a good day.
A wise man once said a clever musician and lyricist doesn’t need to rely on pop tropes of love and love lost to get by. And “David Byrne’s American Utopia” reinforces this—that music does not need to only be about the romantic (or lack there of) to earn its keep. Either way, we’re on a peripheral road to nowhere, as this author’s Dad would say, no? But if you even have one pang of heartache that misses human contact, especially the kind that’s exclusive to live music performance, do yourself a favor and check out HBO’s “David Byrne’s American Utopia” directed by Spike Lee.
