David Byrne has done it again
The title of David Byrne’s most recent album and current tour is Who Is The Sky?. The phrase works two ways. Read literally, it has the playful 1960s feel of a Yoko Ono film or some absurdist Fluxus piece; firmly on brand, in other words, for someone as steeped as Byrne in New York’s downtown art lore. Read it aloud, however, and it becomes ‘Who Is This Guy?’, a more pointed title for an artist who has always seemed – to reference an old Talking Heads song – one of rock’s more slippery people.
At the second of two recent Glasgow dates, both interpretations seem to fit. In Talking Heads, Byrne was a jerky, remote presence, aloof to the point of alien. As his discursive solo career has evolved, he has gradually cut a more avuncular figure, and has lately taken to wearing dungarees and a guileless expression of wide-eyed wonder. Many of the defences of old seem to have been breached.
So, yes – who is this guy? On first appearance, a sweet, neat, silver-haired dude wearing a zingy orange uniform, delivering a........
