Halfway through his first Adelaide show in seven years, David Byrne paused to share something one of his crew spotted on the street: a poster for an Adelaide Fringe show titled simply, ‘Byrne Dance’. While some artists might have called in the lawyers, the former Talking Heads frontman said he was “a little overwhelmed and surprised”, before inviting the two creators of the ‘roving tribute’ onstage. They proceeded to teach the band, the crowd, and David Byrne himself how to dance like, well, David Byrne.

“Do the arm-chop!” one of them yelled to the audience, mimicking the 1981 video for ‘Once in a Lifetime’. Looking amused and a little baffled, the 73-year-old Byrne also obliged, revisiting the jerky dance moves made famous by his much younger self. It was a silly, surreal moment, and while Byrne was happy to play along, he also seemed content to leave it to the fans and keep moving forward.

Byrne last played in Adelaide in late 2018, on his now-famous American Utopia tour (it would subsequently become a Broadway show, Grammy-winning live album and Spike Lee-directed concert film). It was a knockout show, with an eye towards Byrne’s past but both feet firmly in the present; a set that recast the moments of tension, release, and artful nonsense found across his back catalogue as a response to the absurdity and outrage of the first Trump presidency.

You might like

Music

What’s My Scene: My Chérie finds strength in vulnerability

Music

Vale Rob Hirst: tribute from a best mate as Midnight Oil loses its beating heart

Swapping the Adelaide Entertainment Centre theatre for the main arena, this tour revisits many elements of American Utopia on a grander, more colourful scale. Byrne and his 12-piece ensemble of musicians, singers and dancers once again move freely across the stage, their instruments saddled to their bodies like a high school marching band. As a feat of musicianship and choreography it’s no less impressive or infectious a second time round, with many familiar faces – like singer and dancer Tendayi Kuumba – returning from the American Utopia ensemble, along with newcomers like show-stealing bassist and cellist Kely Pinheiro.

It’s a buoyant show, with a floor-to-ceiling panorama of screens that transport the band – decked out in matching blue like French factory workers – into colourful grassy fields, lunar surfaces, and urban streetscapes. The taut political through-line of American Utopia is also granted a little slack this time, in a set dominated by Byrne’s new record Who is the Sky? As Byrne reminded us, it’s an album born of the pandemic; during one new song, ‘My Apartment is My Friend’, the screens offered a 360-degree tour of the New York apartment where Byrne rode out the lockdowns. Aside from it being, literally, his ‘beautiful house’, the song signalled how the years between Australian tours have invited all of us to reckon with our place in the world in big and small ways. 

Inevitably, the most ecstatic moments came from older cuts like ‘Slippery People’, ‘This Must Be The Place (Naïve Melody)’, a cello-driven ‘Psycho Killer’, and ‘Once in a Lifetime’.  They triggered a wave of joy across the crowd from the first drumbeat or bassline, as if through muscle memory. But, as with American Utopia, Byrne curates his past work around the new; Talking Heads’ 1988 track ‘(Nothing But) Flowers’, for instance, perfectly complemented the horns and steelpan drums of recent earworm ‘Everybody Laughs’. Which is to say, a David Byrne show isn’t just about “doing the arm-chop” – or ticking ‘Road to Nowhere’ off the hit list.

Near the end of the show, Byrne borrowed a quote from Hedwig and the Angry Inch writer John Cameron Mitchell, telling us “love and kindness are the most punk things you can do right now”. Byrne said he initially struggled to reconcile the sentiment with the ‘snarling’ punk movement he saw firsthand at venues like CBGBs in the 1970s. “[Then] I realised, no, those things, love and kindness, they’re a form of resistance,” he told the crowd.

Later, during ‘Life During Wartime’, Byrne pointedly illustrated the ground conditions that might make love and kindness seem radical, as the song’s fiery crescendo was backed by a montage of shaky footage of public protests and brutal crackdowns by ICE and police. The morning after the show, news breaks that American federal agents have shot and killed another of its citizens – this time a 37-year-old nurse. 

In the home stretch, Byrne reflected again on the pandemic, sharing an anecdote about a time he rode his bicycle around downtown New York just as restaurants were cautiously reopening. He heard a familiar sound, that nonetheless took him a beat to recognise. “It’s people!” he recalled, “People talking to one another. I thought to myself, ‘Wow despite all our differences, all the craziness, people love being with other people’.”

It’s a stirring idea. One that brings people out to a concert in a heatwave, out onto the streets in solidarity with their communities, or even sign up to an Adelaide Fringe dance flashmob. For the two electric hours David Byrne and his band are onstage, it’s hard not to believe him. 

David Byrne performed at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre on Saturday January 24