David Byrne’s permanent pop revolution

David Byrne has long worn the startled air of a visitor just arrived on Earth. His songs are awash with trenchant questions such as those that fill Once in a Lifetime, one of Talking Heads’ most famous songs. “How did I get here?” its protagonist sings. “How do I work this?” The title of Byrne’s latest album, Who Is the Sky?, comes from a speech-to-text error: a metaphysical misinterpretation of “who is this guy?”.

Byrne’s tour opens, fittingly, with the artist and some of his 12-strong band and dancers standing as though on a moonscape, watching our planet rise on a wraparound screen. The next hour and a half spans bewilderment, fondness, alarm and wonder, as the artist who revolutionised the pop concert raises the stakes once again.

The show, the last night of Byrne’s London residency, is sublime – and very occasionally ridiculous. A track from his new album finds him chatting to the Buddha over canapés at a party; in the preamble, Byrne tells us that, according to various sutras, the Buddha at times had webbed hands and feet, and a retractable penis.

When Byrne isn’t providing context, he and his troupe move around the stage in fits of marimba-toting, shimmying choreography. In 2018, Byrne did away with amp wires, drum stools and static positions and performed in constant motion, as though a marching band had collided with a Brazilian carnival. The American Utopia tour became a Broadway residency, which then became a movie directed by Spike Lee. It was an artistic coup to rival Stop Making Sense, the 1984 Talking Heads concert film widely regarded as one of the finest of the genre.

Did the Tony award for the American Utopia show end up on a shelf in Byrne’s New York apartment, next to his Oscar, his Grammy and his Golden Globe (all for his soundtrack work on 1987’s The Last Emperor)? A 360-degree view of his flat provides the video backdrop to My Apartment Is My Friend, the latest in a long line of Byrne songs about the built environment. During the pandemic, he tells us, he nested there quite equably, drawing and learning to cook Mexican dishes. But on a trip to the shops, he discovered not everyone was coping: women were throwing potatoes at one another. You can just imagine his expression.

This gig is a bravura punk-funk art installation, curating tracks from Who Is the Sky? alongside those from his back catalogue, hand-picked to meet the present moment. From 1979’s Fear of Music, Life During Wartime imagines a post-apocalyptic America where a guerrilla combatant survives on peanut butter and looks after his comrade. The visuals feature ICE raids. “This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco / This ain’t no fooling around,” goes the chorus – ironically, it brings fans to their feet.

Talking Heads’ (Nothing But) Flowers, from 1988, imagines derelict buildings taken over by wildflowers and cornfields: an image of nature bouncing back after humans have retreated. When this tour opened in the US in September, it was the first time Byrne had played the canonical track Psycho Killer live in nearly two decades. Tonight, introduced as the arrangement authored by the late cellist and composer Arthur Russell, it is terrific. Talking Heads are unlikely to ever reunite, even for the rumoured $80m offered for a tour a few years ago. Shows like this, rich with both the band’s old favourites and Byrne’s artistic afterlife, mean they don’t need to.

Meanwhile, a newer song called T Shirt, written with Brian Eno, explores slogan wisdom, both trenchant and goofy: “My beliefs are on this T-shirt / My religion’s in my pants / My condition’s on this iPhone.” Byrne was once a caustic observer of 20th-century manners; in this century, he has embraced a radical equanimity. American Utopia was part of a larger multimedia project called Reasons to Be Cheerful and this tour continues in that vein.

Byrne remains delighted by the world, despite everything. Such brio is as evident in the visuals of someone taking a pig for a walk as it is in the joyous camaraderie of the performers on stage. “What the hell are we doing?” is the unvoiced question.

Photograph by Antonio Olmos for The Observer