David Byrne's American Utopia

David Byrne has alwasy been as much a visual artist as a musician and songwriter. He designs his concerts as if they were art installations and works with great filmmakers to transform a theatrical performance into a different medium rather than making a simple document what happened on stage. His collaboration with Jonathan Demme on the 1984 Talking Heads concert movie Stop Making Sense is still the gold standard for all films of this type. Byrne creates music you want to WATCH as well as listen too, and Spike Lee is more than up to the task of conveying both the scale and the intimacy of Byrne's latest work American Utopia. 

American Utopia began life as Byrne's seventh solo studio album and part of a larger multimedia project titled Reasons to Be Cheerful, which was designed as a pragmatically inspirational way of injecting optimism into humanity despite the state of world affairs. In late 2019, Byrne launched the touring stage version of American Utopia that incorporated songs from the album as well as several classic hits by Talking Heads. The wildly successful tour wrapped up with a five-month engagement at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre, which Lee’s cameras captured over several nights.

Working under the guiding principle that what humans most enjoy watching are other humans, Byrne assembled an eleven-person band where each identically clad musician wears their instruments so they can move around the bare stage unencumbered by stands, cables, and the other formal trappings of a typical concert. Just as Stop Making Sense broke new ground in terms of multi-track digital recoding techniques, the advances in wireless amplification and production in this show feel “next level.” Everything is played live and recorded live, without any of the pre-recorded playback techniques so common with pop performers who dance and move around the stage when they perform. The sound is incredible, the musicians are phenomenally tight, and Byrne is, as always, fascinating to watch. A singular performer with a voice unlike any other, the sixty-eight year old seems as vibrant and powerful a vocalist and showman as he ever has. 

Byrne’s persona has become less otherworldly and far folksier over the decades, but this down-to-earth quality has not compromised the uniqueness of his physical, visual, or lyrical flair. The American Utopia show is unquestionably political but its themes and calls to action are conveyed less via the song selection (though both the new, old, and cover tunes resonate with fresh layers of relevance in the current political climate) and more through the cathartic celebration of life and culture that infuses the performance. Byrne engages directly with the theater audience to set up the songs—referencing the anti-nationalist Dada movement of the early 20th Century, talking about how his experiences getting people to vote, and reminding us that, like many in his multi-cultural band, he too was an immigrant to America, brought here by his parents from Scotland at the age of seven. 

The show darts effortlessly between ebullient and gravely serious, stark darkness and precisely focused light. What comes across most, besides the irresistible music that makes you want to get up and dance, is the need not just for hope but also for optimism powered by positive action. Viewed at home (as it undoubtedly will be, since its release comes late in the year of the COVID-19 lockdown), the film plays like a time capsule opened just six months after getting buried. As we watch, we can’t but think that this show closed just a month before all Broadway theaters went dark and the future of live performance venues throughout the country became unknown. Lyrics and bits of Byrne’s audience banter also take on new levels of meaning when viewed in the month of the film’s release—just three weeks before a fraught and precarious presidential election.  

The first single Byrne released when he announced the album back in January 2018, "Everybody's Coming to My House," at the time felt like a song specific to his idiosyncratic personality as well as an invitation to check out to his soon-to-be-released latest work. In the context of the live show, it comes across like an anthem about immigration. In Lee’s film, it takes on yet another meaning, as those of us who love to share cinematic televised events like this communally are currently unable to have anyone come to our house. At the beginning of the show, Byrne thanks the audience for coming by saying, “thank you for leaving your homes.” Leaving our homes is something we all wish we could do more of these days, but David Byrne’s American Utopia not only transports us out of our living room seats, it invites us into a joyful and connected vision of the future that we all need to keep in mind and hold in our hearts.