The intent in projecting a photo of Colin Kaepernick as the performers, mid-song, kneel and raise their firsts, is well-meaning, but this is basically the kind of exercise in self-congratulatory liberalism that pushes the buttons of easily-outraged Breitbart readers, provokes rapturous applause from an almost universally white audience eager to affirm their liberal bona fides and is likely to make everyone else roll their eyes. “We gotta do better than 20%,” he says, and the crowd cheers (what were they going to do, boo?). Later on, he urges people to vote, noting that local elections only boast a 20% turnout. One is about Kurt Schwitters and Hugo Ball Byrne quotes a few lines from the latter about resisting fascism and gets a nice round of applause. In between songs, Byrne gives a few speeches-all good-intentioned, some cornball. (Why has mid-aughts highlight “Glass, Concrete & Stone” had its key changed from D- to C-major?) A finale rendition of “Road to Nowhere” begins with Byrne reprising his marching-in-place stage move, a la “The Swamp” in Stop Making Sense, but I suspect that song title’s connotation with the Trump administration will render it unplayable live for the rest of Byrne’s career. Vincent collaboration “I Should Watch TV” are coming from a sample programmed into the keyboardist’s gear? Good enough.) The musical re-thinkings here aren’t among his most compelling, but Byrne’s always had great backing bands and his best material is indestructible: even a slightly-less-exciting “I Zimbra” is always going to be fun, I found myself tearing up at an early run through “Don’t Worry About the Government” and this version of “Slippery People” is better than the original studio recording and maybe up there with the Stop Making Sense rendition. (I guess that means the busy brass arrangements on his St. This round of arrangements, thankfully for this non-musical lover, have not been Broadway-fied-ten musicians and two dancers (who occasionally pitch in on rhythm) run through a brisk 100-minute set, which Byrne swears onstage is entirely live. They’re not among Byrne’s strongest material (though predictably they improve with a live performance element), but the set fortunately leans heavily on Talking Heads greatest hits (nine out of 21 songs), four songs from his solo or collaborative albums, two of the dance tracks he’s done guest vocals on (I totally forgot X-Press 2, the musicians behind “Lazy,” existed) and a Janelle Monáe cover, on which more in a bit.īyrne is a veteran of elaborate stage presentations and/or regularly rethinking song arrangements for each tour. A mostly workmanlike rendering of Byrne’s 2019 Broadway show, American Utopia opens with “Here,” one of two songs co-written with Daniel Lopatin from the fairly poky album of the same name-the least familiar selections, five in all, come from that album. The goal of gala presentations is to sell out expensive seats, and the Q&A combo of Lee and Byrne after a concert movie would have been a surefire bet. David Byrne, David Byrne’s American Utopia, Did You Wonder Who Fired The Gun?, Spike Lee, TIFF, TIFF 2020, Travis WilkersonĮven without the pandemic, and the attendant pulling of high-market-value films from the festival circuit until it’s over (?), it’s likely Spike Lee’s David Byrne’s American Utopia would have been the opening night film of TIFF 2020.
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