David Byrne better than he ever was
By Greg Quill, The Toronto Star, 30 October 2008 [Link]

Same as he ever was.

New York folk-art rocker David Byrne has lost none of his ineffable magic.

Backed by a remarkably pared-down band – just bass, drums, keyboards, percussion and Byrne's guitar, as well as three singers and three dancers – a white-haired, keenly athletic Byrne, 56, left a nearly sold-out audience at Massey Hall last night sweating and enthralled after a two-hour show that touched all the right bases and pressed all the right buttons

Ostensibly a celebration of the songs of Byrne and British producer/composer Brian Eno, whose shared fascination in the 1980s with African polyrhythm, oblique melody and gospel chants yielded the best music Talking Heads made, as well as the brilliant collaborative work My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, last night was also a showcase for their latest two-hander, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.

The new music, Byrne explained in one of his typically scattered mumbles, was released several weeks ago on the Internet, and more recently via conventional digital music retailers.

"And soon it will manifest itself in the physical world, where some of us live," he quipped.

Though the famously stage-shy Eno was nowhere in evidence, he was certainly there in musical spirit. Byrne and his energetic ensemble, dressed head to toe in pristine white, like a tennis team at a post-match party, worked their way through a note-perfect retrospective of Talking Heads' powerful, dance-inducing hits – "House In Motion", "Once In A Lifetime", "Life During Wartime", "Heaven", "Take Me To The River" and "Burning Down The House" – propelled by the mighty grooves built into the symmetrical chord patterns and angular, hymn-like choruses, and enforced by Byrne's deadly rhythm guitar.

Rhythm was the physical means of transportation. Byrne was very march a part of the clever choreography, dancing, swaying, allowing others to slide between his rubber legs and leapfrog over his back, without ever taking his hands off the strings or missing a beat.

But the performance was spiritually transporting as well. There were moments, particularly during the more consciously structured new songs ("Strange Overtones", "Never Thought", "My Big Hands Fall Through The Cracks", "Life Is Long" and "One Fine Day") when Byrne's plainspoken poetry, with its corner-of-the-eye images of ordinary lives in dramatic flux and crisis, was positively transcendent.

That was partly due to the clarity and power of his vocal performance. His high tenor has never sounded stronger, or less reliant on the kinds of yawps, hiccups and tics that made his trademark Talking Heads recordings so eerie and quirky.

Full-throated, and soaring above and through the layered harmonies of his band mates, Byrne has never looked so joyfully contented on stage, or as completely in possession of his amazing abilities. His guitar work was muscular, inventive and unequivocal.

Same as he ever was? Maybe better.

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