Last night, for like the first time in forever, I went out to a show. A friend of mine won free tickets from Atlanta's NPR station to see David Byrne, and I was invited to tag along (she won four tickets). The seats were way up in the nosebleed section, and while there's no bad seats in the fabulous Fox Theater (the line of sight was perfect) and we weren't all the way dead last (there were still three rows behind us), we were in the uppermost balcony and Mr. Byrne looked like a little ant from up where we sat. The picture above is zoomed way in.
I caught Byrne's previous American Utopia show a couple of times, and this show, Who Is the Sky?, was generally similar. The musicians were all mic'ed up so there were no amps or other equipment on the stage, instead of a drum kit he had four or five percussionists each with a snare, tom, of bass drum, and the whole show was carefully choreographed with the players all marching around, sometimes in obvious formation, sometimes, seemingly at random. And like the last show, he mixed new tunes from his latest album with a deep list of Talking Heads songs and selections from throughout Byrne's solo career.
What was new and different were the video images. The city setting above isn't a backdrop, at least in the traditional stagecraft sense. The band was surrounded by three enormous video screens and there was another screen beneath them, so at the flick of a button, the (off-stage) art director could create a cityscape, a deep forest, or a video-game setting, and it appeared that the band was not in front of the scenery but within that scenery. During (Nothing But) Flowers, the band appeared to be performing among the aisles of a supermarket, but when Byrne sang, "This was a discount store, now, it's turned into a cornfield," the set instantly transformed into, you guessed it, a cornfield.
Cool.
Every song had its own custom video setting, from realistic scenery to stark monochromatic red or black-and-white. Instead of appearing under spotlights, selected performers played above a white circle of the floor that looked like the aura of a spotlight but without the performer's shadow. There was only a shadow when the script called for one, as in when Byrne appeared to be casting a huge shadow of himself on the screen behind him as he went through his choreographed moves. But then, hilariously, the shadow suddenly "erred" and turned in a different direction as Byrne, reacted with alarm, and then scooted back into place.
This show is a continuation of Byrne's innovative ideas on how to present live music that started with his collaborative experiments with St. Vincent during the Love This Giant tour, continued into American Utopia, and now evolved into Who Is the Sky? Byrne's new songs are serviceable for purposes of the show, but aren't really that interesting on their own (the Who Is the Sky? album is far too upbeat and cheerful for my dour tastes), but he can still hit the high notes on his old Talking Heads songs, which were clearly the audience's favorites. He even performed Psycho Killer, which I understand has been mothballed for at least two decades now.
If you want to see what cutting edge, 21st Century stage design if capable of, and you also happen to like vintage Talking Heads and David Byrne songs, you won't want to miss this show.
