After a career as an acute observer of life’s mundanties (and household appliances) in Talking Heads, collaborative forays with St Vincent and Brian Eno, stand-alone records, installations, books and essays, David Byrne has released his first "solo" record in 14 years.
The title may seem jaundiced in a world of Trump and Putin and the mounting realisation that big tech companies will not free humanity but enslave them but this is actually the soon to be 66 Byrne’s most optimistic and sincere record in decades. As he posits in the liner notes, "Does it have to be like this? Is there another way? These songs are about that looking and that asking."
Laudable stuff indeed but too many of the songs here are too obtuse to have any real emotional connection. He collaborates with long-time friend and musical foil Brian Eno, along with, TTY, Sampha and Thomas Bartlett of The Gloaming and there is no doubting the musical invention on a record that embraces drum programming, celesta, mellotron, and sitar.
There are ghostly Dub references on Gasoline and Dirty Sheets, a grubby satire wherein the answer to everything is "one click away" while the chirpy Everyday is a Miracle finds god herself taking a fond view as she looks down on creation. However, like a lot of late period Byrne, the cutesy quirkiness goes too far with lyrics such as "cockroach might eat Mona Lisa" and "elephants don’t read newspapers".
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Everybody’s Coming to My House echoes Talking Heads’ amused indifference to conspicuous consumerism, and with those electro pulses and syncopated drums may or may not be a tongue and cheek reference to LCD Soundsystem, an act that surely owes much to Byrne’s old band. Along with the terrific Doing The Right Thing, it is certainly among the most musically pleasing songs on the album.
It’s elliptical and smirkingly funny and as Byrne points out, he has no answers to the big questions. However, in the end, this very universal vagueness about the many contradictions and idiocies of human behaviour proves American Utopia’s undoing.
Alan Corr @corralan
