David Byrne - Who Is The Sky?

 

David Byrne — Who Is The Sky

Limited edition "Lemon Yellow" colored vinyl

New solo album from the Talking Heads frontman

It is seven years since David Byrne released his last solo album, American Utopia. Byrne's Post-Talking Heads career has pursued an idiosyncratic path — diversions into Latin American music, opera and trip-hop, collaborations with dance producers and St Vincent. But then came American Utopia, which used cutting-edge technology and choreography to demolish the conventions of a rock show, attracting deserved hyperventilating praise.

A tour that began playing modest theatres wound up filling arenas, spawning a Broadway show, two live albums — one named after a critic's breathless assertion that it was The Best Live Show of All Time — and a Spike Lee-directed movie.

So Byrne arrives at Who Is the Sky? with his stock higher than at any point in the last 35 years. It abandons American Utopia's patchwork approach for a more straightforward form of collaboration, the whole album recorded with Brooklyn's 12-piece Ghost Train Orchestra and Harry Styles producer Kid Harpoon.

But its raison d'être remains essentially the same, says The Guardian: more primary-colored musical optimism, to which end it variously employs Mariachi-style brass ("What Is the Reason for It?"), sweeping 40s-Hollywood-musical strings ("A Door Called No"), rhythms that join the dots between Cuban clave and George Michael's Faith ("Don't Be Like That") and an off-kilter, vocoder-bedecked take on the sumptuous soul of former Byrne collaborator Thom Bell on "I'm an Outsider."

Byrne's first-time collaboration between himself, Grammy-winning producer Kid Harpoon aka Tom Hull (Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus) and New York-based chamber ensemble Ghost Train Orchestra, and guest appearances by Paramore's Hayley Williams, longtime collaborator St. Vincent and The Smile drummer Tom Skinner, builds upon the optimistic themes laid out by American Utopia and its supporting tour, but more specifically spelled out by the Grammy-winning Broadway show and subsequent movie.

With this offering, Byrne continues his lifelong exploration of human connection and the potential for societal unity against the chaotic backdrop of the world. Who Is the Sky? is particularly personal, cinematic, humorous and joyful, but often with a lesson baked in — that love is unexplainable, that enlightenment means very different things to different people and that it's always a good idea to moisturize, whether you wake up the next morning with skin like a baby or not. Most importantly, the songs evince Byrne's gift for riding the razor's edge of avant-garde and accessible pop.

 

1. Everybody Laughs

2. When We Are Singing

3. My Apartment Is My Friend

4. A Door Called No

5. What Is the Reason for It?

6. I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party

7. Don't Be Like That

8. The Avant Garde

9. Moisturizing Thing

10. I'm an Outsider

11. She Explains Things to Me

12. The Truth

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