Above: how I would sum up the musical collaboration that prompted 11 to 40 individuals to dress in white, don tutus, and perform at a historic venue for thousands of crazed, technologically enabed fans.
He began three minutes late, at 8:18 pm, on his second of two nights in New York and at the end of his tour for the Eno-produced Everything That Happens Will Happen Today; or, Everything That's Released Will Stream Free Today, be Payable by Cash or Credit in a Few Weeks. For the tour, David Byrne added a ten-piece ensemble of musicians who can dance and dancers who can strum a guitar. Chastising TicketsNow in his introduction, Byrne also informed us of the lawsuit involving this "essentially scalping website" north of the border: "Hang on to your tickets or your receipts, because it looks like that case is going to make its way down this side of the 49th Parallel." Cheers followed boos for the two most notorious companies beginning with "ticket."
The dancers, clad as Byrne in all white, made for a kind of Bahamas-ready nose-thumb at standard orchestra dress code. Fidgety and chaotic, they announced all eyes should be on stage left, right and center. Their choreographed but loosely executed moves seemed fit for an educational musical about cell parts or an Of Montreal music video. They were, as beginnings of concerts tend to be, distracting. Like channel-surfing when you first turn on the TV, the first few minutes of a concert are about the brain absorbing the set, then getting to work on relaxation and neural pruning, or in my case, note-taking.
As pieces from the late collaboration with Brian Eno gave way to pieces from the early collaboration with Brian Eno and key pieces of Talking Heads, dancer wiggles gave way to audience wiggles. That is until they outdid us with vaults over David Byrne's shoulders and a wonderful use of rolling desk chairs that saw the three dancers and singer seated and spinning dreamily as the music played. As the song ended, the sole male dancer flamboyantly steered himself off stage as if on a speeding ship.
They gave us three encores, the first of which began, lights up, with Byrne's keyboardist suddenly appearing before the venue's famed organ. His playing was pretty yet cacophonous, meandering in a way that fit with the material of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.
Throughout, Byrne's mic seemed turned up a little too high--his voice, in its upper registers, is its own megaphone. To that end, he seemed most natural an in tune with the older material, which is vocally rougher, more gyrating, more spasmodic. But he chose a perfect ending, the title track of "Everything," which served as a lullaby to send around three generations of fans home to bed. After the powerful bang of "Burning Down the House" that saw some 40 smart-casual ballerinas join the core on stage, "Everything" was a nightcap; Byrne had tired himself out enough to approach the song with the lulling vocals it requires.
After one encore ended, the lead male backing singer strutted off stage left with his right hand in a peace sign. The trite gesture was given new life by this noncelebrity musician, this participant in the peaceful demonstration that music is.
