David Byrne

American Utopia On Broadway – Original Cast Recording Live

NONESUCH Bryne’s career-topping, jawdropping stage spectacular feels diminished on record.

David Byrne’s 2018 American Utopia tour rightly earned the silver-haired pop polymath his most rapturous reviews since his prime-time Talking Heads days, blasting him into the arena-rock premiere league and extending into a Broadway residency.

Performing on an artfully bare stage with a dynamic troupe of singer-dancer-musicians, the 67-year-old avant-pop legend clothes new tracks and old classics alike in explosively funky marching-band arrangements and superbly wonky choreography. It is an exhilarating audio-visual spectacular, but it inevitably loses something when shrunk to a conventional live album format. Divorced from their theatrical staging and Byrne’s droll banter, folksy surrealist ballads like Every Day Is A Miracle and I Dance Like This lose much of their charm, while even the vintage Heads classic Once In A Lifetime and Burning Down The House feel slightly underpowered. That said, the brass-heavy polyrhythmic Afrofunk versions of I Zimbra, Slippery People and Blind still pack a mighty kinetic kick. Byrne and his multiracial crew also invest Janelle Monáe’s blistering anti-racist protest anthem Hell You Talmbout with righteous gospel-fired passion.

A decent live album, but the inevitable film or DVD version will make much more sense. ■■■■■■■■■■