David Byrne Remains in Light

By Bill Thorness

February 19, 2009—Everything that happened today paled in comparison to a two-hour sonic tremolo created tonight by David Byrne and friends at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, the symphony space with reputedly the best acoustics in town.

Byrne showed off the bookends of his career, performing most of his newest album, a collaboration with Brian Eno, as well as reaching back deep into the Talking Heads catalog for some rarely performed classics and other works that that Eno had a hand in. The band, fresh back from Australia and all dressed in casual whites that reflected the leader’s snowy hair color, consisted of a tight rhythm section, funky keyboardist, three backup singers and Byrne as the sole electric guitarist.

Beginning with “Strange Overtones” from the new Eno collaboration Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (which may be streamed for free at the album's site), Byrne invited a wry smile from fans who’ve long reveled in his tones, both vocally and musically. The song’s lyrics “This groove is out of fashion/These beats are 20 years old” didn’t seem to put off the adoring audience or make the music any less relevant to a hall filled with people who mirrored that described demographic.

While the song was catchy and more reminiscent of Byrne’s recent solo work than most of Happens, it paled next to the groove of “I Zimbra,” the blistering incantation that introduced many a New Wave fan to world beats. On this Byrne/Eno collaboration that opened the Heads’ 1979 Fear of Music album, a wall of percussion was overlaid with looping guitar solos and chanted lyrics inspired by a German Dadaist poet. Eno figured heavily in the Talking Heads style from 1978 to 1982, at times producing and performing with the band.

An extended, raucous standing ovation had Byrne smiling as the concert began (finally saying “Well, I got what I came for. I can go home now” before playing a note), but the response reached a new crescendo when he launched into a track from the 1981 Eno collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, an album of found recordings, which he wryly noted is now known as “sampling,” and critics have said is an art form that was virtually invented with the album.

The recordings that the duo set to polyrhythmic beats included tape of an exorcism, a radio talk show host and a fiery southern preacher, which Byrne recreated for a jumpy rendition of “Help Me, Somebody.” He sang the lyrics, thus avoiding the difficulties of rights to the “samples,” and his persona was well suited to the preacher’s admonitions about being watched by an all-seeing creator: “He’s so high, you can’t get over him! He’s so low, you can’t get under him! If you make your bed in heaven, he’s there; if you make your bed in hell, he’s there; he’s everywhere!”

The specter or promise of an afterlife has often figured in Byrne’s songs, and he reached back into the catalog to play the ballad “Heaven,” described as a party “where everyone leaves at exactly the same time.” The ideas were updated in the new, gospel-tinged “One Fine Day,” which includes Eno-inspired choral singing that could have been sampled from Eno’s album Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and espouses the sentiment “When the door appears/I’ll go right through”.

Another Byrne theme concerns the trappings of home life, and the new album trods those varnished boards as well. While the concert didn’t include the melodic “Naive Melody (This Must Be the Place)” so familiar from the Jonathan Demme film “Stop Making Sense” in which Byrne dances with a floor lamp, the band played a new Happens song simply called “Home.” It included a group of acoustic guitars lined into a broad strumming chorus, very appropriate for the lyrical ode, where “every hand goes searching for its partner in crime, under chairs and behind tables.” In a typical Byrnian tweak, the lyrics devolve into suspicion: “Home-and the cam’ras watching/Home-will infect what ever you do.” Even with the Orwellian twist, Byrne still seems to be shrugging and telling the audience to dance (if it’s allowed).

The heart of the performance was delivered through adroit, emotional lyrics, but the blood was kept pumping with regular cardio forays into dance rock. The first audience members were seen to hop out of their cushy symphony seats with the unveiling of “Houses in Motion,” another song from 1980’s Remain in Light rarely heard in a post-Heads concert. The hits “Once in a Lifetime,” “Take Me to the River” and “Life During Wartime” recalled familiar party grooves and pulled the entire audience to their feet, but “Crosseyed and Painless” again showcased the intense complexity and depth of early Heads work.

The music was delightfully interpreted throughout the evening by a trio of dancers - two women and a man who had some herky-jerky moves recalling early Byrne stage antics. The three flowed on and off stage, interacting with the backup singers, who also occasionally danced. They also danced with Byrne, in choreography ranging from shuffling and hip-shaking to an encore where the male dancer ran up behind the singer and did a leapfrog vault over him. The effect added theater and a touch of Twyla Tharp to the concert, but it also injected energy and movement to the stage tableau, bringing a youthfulness to the material that the 56-year-old Byrne might not have been able to do on his own. Although Byrne’s still trim and energetic (hey, he's a cyclist, isn't he?), gone may be the “Stop Making Sense” days when he ran full-tilt in circles around the stage perimeter.

The early Heads song “Air” featured the dancers holding pastel-colored unplugged Fender Stratocasters, which they “played” and swung around their torsos in modern-dance interpretations of a pop star’s gyrations. Their air-guitar stylings provided an amusing counterpoint to the nervous lyrics about the invisible element surrounding us.

Three encores – or was it four? – kept the audience on its feet and hooting further into the evening that some in the aging Boomer crowd had probably seen on any other recent Wednesday. Returning with huge smiles (once with the entire band in white tutus) and leaving each time with grateful bows and waves to the crowd, the band pulled out more Happens tunes, such as the languid title track and the poppy “Life is Long” and Heads hits, such as the chart-topping “Burning Down the House.”

While the dance-party atmosphere made the generous concert feel like a celebration of a long career, the new material also injected the reality of the passage of time since the early Byrne/Eno work. Their new album was reputedly created with each artist in their home offices, sending tracks from New York to London via e-mail. One of those new, mellower songs was performed with Byrne and the three dancers sitting and spinning in identical rolling office chairs. Now there’s a scenario familiar to the audience. Roll on.