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David Byrne

A A A Comments By Peter Scholtes Wednesday, Oct 8 2008

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Though it opens up in your mind gradually, David Byrne's new album with Brian Eno might well be his deepest and best since the two collaborated in the late '70s and early '80s on three classic Talking Heads albums, Byrne's own The Catherine Wheel, and the duo's proto-sampling funk mosaic My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, the 2006 reissue of which (on Nonesuch) rekindled the partnership. A couple of months after its online-only release, the catchy and ebullient Everything That Happens Will Happen Today still emerges as music and meaning, its lullaby title track sounding more and more like a prayer for Iraqi life during wartime, while "The River" turns out to be one of the more touching tributes ever written to the participatory communion of popular music and punk. The one tune that seems to be about music explicitly, "Strange Overtones," might instead describe a more intimate collaboration. Byrne has never sung with more gentle feeling, and Eno, who composed the pop-simple yet characteristically atmospheric backing tracks, appears to bring out the best in him. The tour features Byrne but not Eno, playing songs from many of the above releases with a backing band and choreographed dancers, the kind of production Everything That Happens deserves.
Tue., Oct. 14, 7:30 p.m., 2008