Who Is The Sky?
David Byrne’s last album, 2018’s *American Utopia*, wasn’t merely an album: It was a sprawling multimedia work that encompassed music, a stage show, and a film that captured the magic of its performance. In fact, it was so sprawling that its chronology even includes a lengthy period of dormancy, between opening on Broadway at the end of 2019 and restarting in 2021 after COVID restrictions were eased. “During the pandemic, of course, I wanted to write new songs, but I felt like what was happening was bigger than anything I could write about,” Byrne tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe of that unexpected gap. “And I didn’t quite know how to address it.” While the songs that make up his eighth album under his given name, *Who Is the Sky?*, recorded with the musically elastic Ghost Train Orchestra, aren’t directly a product of that time, there are threads and themes that trace back to it. “I realized that some of these new songs are coming out of that,” he adds. The most obvious is probably the ode to his living quarters “My Apartment Is My Friend,” where Byrne ruminates on how intimate that physical space has become. \"So forgive me if I hesitate, if a tear comes now and then,” he sings. “You stood by me when darkness fell/My apartment is my friend.” Byrne has always had a gift for making the specific, and even the fantastical, seem universal. “Moisturizing Thing” plays like a Hollywood sci-fi, starring Byrne himself, in which he tries an anti-aging skin treatment only to turn into a toddler, forcing him to see the world through another’s eyes. He’s constantly asking more of himself in these songs: He questions a smiling religious teacher who’s gorging himself on hors d’oeuvres (“I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party”); he ponders the place he’s been put in history (“The Avant Garde”); he wonders how his wife just understands things so naturally (“She Explains Things to Me”); he sees life in cycles of happiness and pain, searching and resolution (“Everybody Laughs”). And he does it all with the playfulness, grace, and naked, life-affirming joy of a musical elder statesman who has never lost his curious, creative spark.
Who Is The Sky? is a culmination of David Byrne's freewheelery, as he indulges in ideas with the abandon of a true living legend.
'Who Is the Sky?,' David Byrne's first album since 2018's 'American Utopia,' is a joyous rejoinder to a creeping sense of gloom.
Every song on ‘Who Is The Sky?’ proves that he’s still as creative and enthusiastic as he ever was.
On his latest album, the Talking Heads frontman delivers a delectable smorgasbord of introspective, story-driven songs.
Who Is The Sky? by David Byrne album review by Maria Luísa Richter for Northern Transmissions. The multi-artist's LP is now out via Matador
His last album was criticised for being too upbeat during Trump 1.0 but became a phenomenal live show, and the Talking Heads frontman remains sunny – almost to a fault
From his early days with Talking Heads, David Byrne has ploughed a highly individual furrow, and exploited a persona that combines naivety with knowingness, fun pop with serious intent. He's perhaps, without appearing to be, one of the most spiritually orientated arists working in popular music today.
Joyful songs and weighty questions on former Talking Head David Byrne's latest studio album, Who Is The Sky?