Orange is still the new black. David Byrne and his 12-piece ensemble made this abundantly clear at their blockbuster concert last night at the Fillmore Miami Beach, the first of a two-night residency. Clad in two-piece outfits in the hue normally associated with all things carceral, their vibe onstage was the opposite of imprisoned—if anything, it was liberating, an exultant celebration of freedom and democracy, communicated through the unifying delights of music and dance, rhythm and melody.
If you were lucky enough to have caught Byrne’s last appearance at the Fillmore, to promote his American Utopia tour before its dazzling graduation to Broadway, then his latest jaunt, titled Who is the Sky? After the name of his latest LP, will feel like an extension of the former. It shares some of American Utopia’s personnel—impossibly talented triple threats who not only can dance, sing and play music while constantly in motion but do all of this on Byrne’s offbeat and often humorous wavelength. There was so much theatre in last night’s show that it, like its predecessor, feels bound for Broadway.
From the start, multimedia elements combine to pull the eye in various directions, sometimes verging on the overwhelming—Byrne is nothing if not a maximalist artist. The opener, a chamber-music arrangement of Talking Heads’ “Heaven” with only violin, cello and keyboard accentuating Byrne’s voice, featured, on a video screen behind the stage, an elliptical image of the Earth rising behind the moon. Byrne then described the planet as “our heaven—the only one we have.”
“Everybody Laughs” featured a glorious city symphony projected behind the action—a montage of on-the-street video that included pickup backgammon games and an individual walking a pig on a leash—while the joyous “And She Was,” the first tune to rouse the audience out of its seats, featured aerial drone images of a suburb, with Byrne’s ensemble playfully craning their necks skyward to gaze at the song’s subject, floating above the horizon on a certain chemical enhancement.
Byrne generously populated his set list with Talking Heads classics, and the crowd responded in kind, dancing in their seats and the aisles whenever a song from 1977 to 1988 lit up the stage. The compositions were at once familiar and transformed, with new arrangements that testified to their tuneful elasticity. “Houses in Motion,” more so than on its original album, was a monster hit in this setting—the sort of swampy funk in which Parliament specialized. “Psycho Killer” and “Once in a Lifetime” both started with single notes, teased and repeated and extended until they found their way into the earworm melodies we all know and love. The former’s thunderous drumbeat segued into a cello taking a lead position normally associated with electric guitar, and absolutely shredding toward an ecstatic closure.
Many of the more theatrical elements emerged from Byrne’s vintage and current solo material. “Like Humans Do,” perhaps the show’s pinnacle of whimsy, featured video of the band members in various animal masks—an eagle, a beaver, a tiger—emulating, with exacting precision, the same musicians’ live choreography. Back-to-back cuts from Who is the Sky?, “Moisturizing Thing” and “My Apartment is My Friend,” both felt like tunes from a full-on stage musical in development, with each piece rich in storytelling and abounding in physical and sonic comedy. If there was one misfire in the set, it was “Independence Day,” from Byrne’s solo debut Rei Momo, presented here as an almost limp bluegrass hoe-down that overstayed its welcome.
Byrne, in his between-song banter and select visuals, peppered the concert with politics to a greater degree than American Utopia, befitting our perilous zeitgeist. Byrne quoted the musical-theater artist John Cameron Mitchell—“Love and kindness are a form of resistance”—and plastered the video screen with T-shirt phrases such as “Make America Gay Again” and “No Kings” during, appropriately enough, “T Shirt.” “Life During Wartime,” for me the emotional and visceral crescendo of the set, featured video of anti-ICE protests, wedding the dystopian lyrics of 1978 to contemporary struggles.
This description can only go so far. To borrow some terminology from one of my favorite music podcasts, You’ll Hear It, there were so many “apex moments” in this concert that I can scarcely describe them all. You have to be there. Tonight’s show is officially sold out, but I recommend resale tickets to experience the two hours of bliss that filled the venue last night.
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