Gig review: David Byrne + Anna Calvi at The Piece Hall, Halifax
The former Talking Heads singer delivers a knockout performance at one of Britain’s finest venues.
Some gigs hit you with their energy, some with their musicality, and some with the commitment and personality of the performers. David Byrne’s new show, Who Is The Sky?, remarkably combines all three in a brilliantly choreographed staging that’s bound to live long in the memory of all who witnessed it in the sunlit setting of Halifax’s Georgian Piece Hall.
Picking up the baton from his 2018 American Utopia tour, which spawned a Broadway show and widely acclaimed concert film directed by Spike Lee, Byrne arrives onstage with a dozen-strong ensemble of musicians and singers/dancers in matching orange jackets, T-shirts and trousers. If their appearance suggests US prison wear, the vibe throughout the next two hours is anything but downbeat.
The now 74-year-old singer and his band remain in almost constant motion in a show that wears its intelligence and techno trickery lightly. Its joyful mood is surely enough to melt even the hardest of hearts.
The 18 songs here provide a cross-section of his career – with some glorious material from his Talking Heads days nestled alongside his solo work and a collaboration with Brian Eno – with keen cyclist Byrne’s concerns for the environment and our relationship with nature being a running theme.
It’s most pronounced in (Nothing But) Flowers, which imagines an America returned to a rural idyll (“Once there were parking lots/Now, it’s a peaceful oasis”) set to the lilting arpeggios of African Highlife guitars, but is noticeable too in the giant screen video that accompanies Like Humans Do, in which band members don animal masks and Byrne observes that the separation between people and nature “really kicked in around the time of the Enlightenment…(but) the good news is it doesn’t have to be that way”.
Meanwhile Air, from Talking Heads’ 1979 album Fear of Music, addresses pollution (“What is happening to my skin?/Where is that protection that I needed?”).
Byrne shares a whimsical memory of youthful LSD-taking that inspired And She Was; another Talking Heads song, This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) is equally as well received. There’s a plea for love and kindness in What Is The Reason For It, while the rubbery basslines of Kely Cristina Pinheiro bring some serious funk to Strange Overtones, Houses in Motion and Slippery People.
Independence Day, from Byrne’s first solo album Rei Momo, is distinguished by the fiddle-playing of musical director Ray Suen, who has previously worked with the likes of Lorde and Vampire Weekend, and augmented by the clever use of names on the big screen following the performers as they circulate around the stage.
Psycho Killer is another tour-de-force, with Byrne noting the contribution of the late avant-garde musician Arthur Russell to its original arrangement; in this instance, the guitars are initially toned down and the percussion more overt before the song gathers speed and builds to a crescendo.
The loudest applause of the night is reserved for the footage that accompanies Life During Wartime of protesters demonstrating against the brutal behaviour of the Trump presidency’s deployment of ICE agents in several American states. The lyrics “This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no foolin’ around” have never seemed more sobering.
The mood lifts with Once in a Lifetime, during which the stage is bathed in orange. Before encoring with a jubilant Everybody’s Coming To My House, Byrne recalls that while cycling around New York City during lockdown he was struck by the sound of conversation. “Despite all of our differences, despite all the craziness, people are into being with one another,” he notes heart-warmingly.
While Byrne’s ensemble take their bows at the end of the wriggly Burning Down The House, the singer lets out whoops of joy.
As we shuffle out of the Piece Hall to the strains Brian Eno’s ambient classic An Ending (Ascent), a young fan, who’d been so inspired by his parents’ memories of the American Utopia show that he’d flown over from Dublin with a friend to catch this show in Yorkshire, can’t seem to believe his own eyes and ears. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” he says, shaking his head. It’s an understandable reaction.
Bolstered by an excellent opening set by Anna Calvi – with whom Byrne made a surprise guest appearance, duetting in her song Strange Weather – this truly was a show for the ages.