Byrne delivers in a deceptively stripped-down show at Riverside
Late in his sold-out show Tuesday night at the Riverside Theater, David Byrne sang some lyrics within the thumping, strobe-lit dirge of “I Dance Like This” that were an apt description of the evening.
“We dance like this, because it feels so damn good,” the 66-year-old Talking Heads founder sang as he lunged, lurched and pumped his fists in front of an 11-piece ensemble. “If we could dance better, well, you know that we would.”
Sure, Byrne and his musicians — a lively and talented crew of drummers, guitarists (including Milwaukee’s Angie Swan), singers and keyboardists — won’t be confused with a trained dance troupe. But his “dance like no one is watching” reflection was a bit too humble. The ensemble had, after all, collectively mastered the nonstop synchronized choreography of a seemingly simplistic concert that was actually mesmerizing in its complexity.
For his first solo tour in eight years, Byrne turned the concept of a rock show on its head — crafting an evening that was part experimental pop art, part musical theater and entirely enjoyable.
Many musicians have attempted to strip the concert experience to its core. Byrne did so literally.
The stage was bare as the show began, with the exception of the singer, barefoot and dressed in a gray suit, sitting at a card table with a mock human brain on top of it. That organ would become his muse in the opening “Here,” one of the set list’s seven selections from this year’s album, “American Utopia.” As his familiar voice recited different parts of the brain, the song swelled and the first two supporting musicians emerged from behind the silver-beaded curtain that surrounded the performance space.
As more gray-suited performers arrived — and started their intricate machinations of entrances, exits, struts and poses — the magic of the show became clear.
Disconnected from the usual trappings of a concert stage — there were no amplifiers, microphone stands, display screens, or even cords and wires — the musicians were free to intermingle in orchestrated movement as Byrne writhed among their ranks. The monochromatic set was altered only by lighting hues — a bath of red on the droning “Dog’s Mind,” and blue accents in the crescendo of the syncopated groove of “Doing the Right Thing.”
While the set’s Talking Heads songs roused the crowd — first in the percussive revelry of “I Zimbra,” later with Byrne’s own post-song “whoo!” mirroring the audience’s exuberance for “Once in a Lifetime” — they were far from the only highlights of a set that merged the 1980s post-punk band’s music with his more recent solo work.
Band members bounced into the spotlight as “Toe Jam” bopped from the stage. Later, as he closed the show’s encores with the night’s most poignant moment, a defiant, percussive cover of Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talmbout,” Byrne added to the song's refrains additional names of AfricanAmerican victims of law enforcement interactions or racial violence — including Milwaukee's Dontre Hamilton.
At the end of the night’s main set, Byrne was strumming an acoustic guitar from the side of the stage as the buoyant melody of “Burning Down the House” erupted through the hall.
And, in smiling formation in the band and joyfully in the audience, everybody danced as well as they possibly could.