Performing American Utopia’s most sanguine track, “Every Day Is a Miracle,” he grins slyly, as though the bad news of adulthood has been paused and replaced with childlike giddiness. In another academic interlude, he lightly explains the Dadaist art movement and performs a tongue-twisting passage of Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate, a 1920s hallmark of sound poetry that, in Byrne’s intonation, sounds like an exorcism at a Guitar Center. “Say her name!”īyrne lets his moralist rage explode, but he also balances it with levity. “Say his name!” they boom, fiery and distraught. Later, while covering Janelle Monáe’s protest anthem “Hell You Talmbout,” Byrne and the group shout the names of those who’ve died at the hands of blatant racism and police brutality-Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Emmett Till. “We’re all immigrants and we couldn’t do this show without them,” he announces, to wild applause. Midway through the performance, he reminds the crowd that he is originally from Scotland, and that other members of his band are from France, Brazil, and beyond. There is a political engine to this performance-the kind of deliberately worded activism that is technically nonpartisan, though with a clearly humming progressive core-but Byrne’s goal is to urge kinder considerations of how we process the stressors of modernity.Īt key moments, Byrne’s pedagogical presence turns gently topical. And Broadway will be a better place for having hosted the ex-Talking Heads frontman for the next four months: The rock iconoclast, still eager to reinvent his most famous songs, inspires a quietly insurgent kind of optimism. When a version of the show debuted in England last June, NME suggested it “ may just be the best live show of all time”-praise later lifted by Byrne for the title of a live EP. David Byrne is currently pioneering the cause on Broadway, in a limited-run stage show that feels equal parts civics seminar, rock summit, and postmodern dance revue.Īmerican Utopia, an adaptation of the world tour behind Byrne’s most recent studio album, lands at NYC’s Hudson Theatre with plenty of fanfare. More TED Talks should involve bare feet and rubber brains.
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