“There she is - our heaven. The only one we’ve got,” David Byrne said, as an image of planet earth rose gently behind him on the giant LED screen. Talking Heads’ own Heaven had just finished - the opening track of this wonderful, singular and joyous show.
If Byrne’s words are a reminder of the transience and fragility of the moment we’re in, then tonight’s show is all about the happiness and hope that can be found in humanity.
Dressed from head to foot in blue, Byrne and his 12-piece backing band play for two hours at the first of four sold out Hammersmith shows. In a fraught, dark, world this is hope writ out in 20ft high technicolor letters. Building on his American Utopia tour in 2018, it’s part gig, part art piece; a spectacular reimagining of what a live music show can be. The musicians wear their instruments as they move around the stage and the huge screens behind them create backdrops of fields, sunsets, seas and grocery stores. It gives the whole thing a kinetic, fluid feeling - a show of finely-tuned choreography and perpetual motion.
Byrne also has a story to tell. Between songs he puzzles over existential themes. He asks if animals can love. He ponders whether Buddha had a retractable penis. And he recalls how seeing a woman throwing potatoes at someone in a store reminded him that some people weren’t dealing with the pandemic as well as he was. The overall message to this self-conscious storytelling is clear: people need people. Collective action can change the world.
And the songs help tell this tale too. The set is a mix of Byrne’s solo work - focusing on his recent LP Who Is the Sky? - with Talking Heads’ flawless hits. And She Was is an early highlight. This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) remains one of the best songs ever written (the moment when the theatre was plunged into darkness as they sang “And you’ll love me 'til my heart stops” is magnificent). And the run of Psycho Killer, Life During Wartime and Once in a Lifetime is a revelatory way to bring the show to a close - the band framed against a deep orange backdrop - before they return to finish the encore with Everybody's Coming to My House and Burning Down the House.
While they play Life During Wartime, footage of ICE officers attacking protesters plays behind him. It’s a vivid reminder of the real events happening beyond these walls. And while Byrne’s solution - that “love and kindness are a form of resistance” - is perhaps too simplistic an answer to everything going on, if there was ever a time to cling on to a sense of joy and hope we can find in this one world of ours, it’s now. Byrne and his band spellbinding show makes you, for two hours at least, believe that anything’s possible.
