American Utopia
This record—Byrne’s first as a solo artist in 14 years—offers a timely examination of the American experiment, shot through with purpose and kinetic strangeness. Whether clinging to small pleasures with absurdist observations (“Every Day Is a Miracle”) or contemplating freedom amid harmonica-sprinkled funk (“Gasoline and Dirty Sheets”), the tremulous former Talking Heads leader brings trademark brio and unexpectedness. And as the giddy, percussive earworm “Everybody’s Coming to My House” hits (“We’re only tourists in this life/Only tourists, but the view is nice”), *American Utopia* puts forward a compelling case for optimism in even the darkest times.
David Byrne’s first true solo album in 14 years is daring and open-hearted. The risks Byrne takes on these songs, however, too often feel clumsy or gaudy.
The purest expression of David Byrne’s creative outlook can’t be found on a Talking Heads record or in an elaborate installation or in any of the thousands of words he’s written about songs, current events, cycling, and art. It’s in a movie, and it’s not even the first movie that springs to mind: In the “Shopping Is A…
Business as usual for a man who, at this stage, would find it impossible to make anything less than amazing.
David Byrne's American Utopia is an album packed with his trademark eccentricity, with the odd immediately accessible moment.
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David Byrne's timely album reminds us why the ex-Talking Head is one of pop music's greatest chroniclers of creepy disorientation.
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David Byrne seems to be simultaneously inviting and acknowledging some likely reactions to his 2018 album, American Utopia, in his own liner notes.
David Byrne is a busy guy. In the six years since his last full-length, 2012's St. Vincent collab Love This Giant, the 65-year old artist ha...
It has been some 14 or so years since we last heard from David Byrne on a fully realized solo project. 2004's Grown Backwards saw the now 65-year-old former Talking Heads frontman caught in between staying true to his immensely quirky and individualistic
To some, David Byrne is a wild-eyed performer who once rocked an oversized suit and wrote some of the eighties most eccentric and charming singles. To
David Byrne's outlook appears uniquely optimistic rather than out of touch on his first solo album in 14 years 'American Utopia'.
American Utopia is the sound of one of pop’s idiosyncratic voices continuing to follow his wayward muse.
'American Utopia by David Byrne, album review by Leslie Chu, the full-length comes out on March 9th via Todomundo/Nonesuch Records
David Byrne - American Utopia review: Is it the truth or merely a description?
“When the song comes on/ everything stops, everything’s changed,” sings David Byrne on This Is That, a wonderfully strange distillation of pop music’s capacity for self-transformation.
David Byrne returns with a hopeful collection of songs to restore our faith in the world