David Byrne – Who Is The Sky?: Album Review

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David Byrne’s gift for making the normal seem strange – and vice versa – is a rare quality, to be cherished.

Dues, you gotta earn them.

And once you’ve earned them, you got some latitude to mess about with people’s ideas about you, your music and what the hell they have the right to expect of either.

David Byrne has earned his dues. Over the course of the last five-plus decades the former? (boo) future? (please) creative pivot of Talking Heads has become an icon for those who choose to avoid being pigeonholed.

Firstly, he led TH out of the muddy CBGB scene and to one of the finest records of the 20th century in 1980’s Remain In Light, then latterly to unexpected mainstream success.

Few bands in music history ended up straddling the chasm between invention and commerciality, a legacy which only Radiohead have since embraced.

For David Byrne, there was a questing spirit to quench, a roving personal journey which post-Talking Heads’ lamented split has embraced solo releases, scoring movies, Broadway shows and visual artistry.

Recent events like the re-release of the 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense have prompted regrets voiced publicly about the role he played in his old band’s demise.

Speculation then reached fever pitch in June in the run up to a cross-band announcement, only for fans to be left disappointed when David Byrne distanced himself from any kind of project to revive them.

The heartbroken will have been overjoyed though to learn then of Who Is The Sky?, a first release since 2018’s American Utopia, a record that morphed into what would ultimately become a Spike Lee-directed film.

New material evolved organically, but after working up a pile of demos the veteran turned to Harry Styles and Miley Cyrus producer Kid Harpoon (also known as Tom Hull) and the amorphous New York-based instrumental collective The Ghost Train Orchestra to flesh them out.

David Byrne himself has described what it’s all about by promising listeners: “A chance to be the mythical creature we all harbour inside. A chance to step into another reality. A chance to transcend and escape from the prison of ourselves.”

High concepts yes, but at least in the beginning the messages are universal, as opener Everybody Laughs charts a course through happily strummed acoustics and tropical brass; on it the singer sounds very much at one with the things that form common bonds amongst us.

This comparatively straight line also flows through When We Are Singing, a clever and simple beat-led track which if you close your eyes could’ve come from his old outfit’s later stuff, right up that is until the weirdly bent harmonies kick in towards the end.

Such a gift for making the normal seem strange – and vice versa – is a rare quality, to be cherished.

I Met The Buddha At A Downtown Party for instance is themed around the character getting best value out of an all you can eat buffet, whilst The Avant Garde pokes fun at the humourless gorgons who protect high art’s integrity like that was a job worth doing.

Some people won’t get the jokes – and Moisturizer Thing feels like a poem that might’ve sounded better in the bath – but the Mariachi canter of the Hayley Williams co-powered What Is The Reason For It? thrills cooly, whilst the leftfield chamber pop of I’m An Outsider isn’t the basic personal statement you might expect.

Dues. David Byrne has paid them and at this stage of life. He certainly doesn’t owe anybody anything, least of all an explanation.

Who Is the Sky? is cryptic but not hard to understand, playful but not lacking in purpose.

It would probably been wrong to expect anything else.

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