8/6/2023 0 Comments American utopia dvdIt’s amoving indictment of the current system.īyrne plays most of the classics, with the intriguing exception of Psycho Killer. Where the song shouts the names of murdered people of colour, Leecuts to dolly shots pressing into blown-up pictures of the deceased. This is where Lee’s signature style seepsin the most. It could’ve been an unwise move for a 67-year-old white man to sing JanelleMonáe’s protest song Hell You Talmbout (Byrne says as much), but the politicalpoignance shakes you, staggers you. Thisis something you’d expect more from someone like Michael Moore than an 80s popsinger, but its sincerity weaves beautifully with Byrne’s music.ĭavid Byrne and Spike Lee. Byrne spends anentire segment soliloquising the Vote, in which a portion of the audience isilluminated to show the percentage of people who actually voted in 2016. These moments wield a deeper visualsignificance, unsurprising given that Spike Lee directs this film of the show. He recounts pithy anecdotes from his life, discusses the horrorsof meeting people, and relays facts about babies’ brains having more neuralconnections than adults.īutit’s Byrne’s political asides that reach in close. With 11 otherband members, who carry their instruments on their chests to allow freedom ofmovement, Byrne addresses the audience between songs. But Stop Making Sense was never explicitly political, onlysymbolically, whereas American Utopia has no choice. Coming from the Gordon Gecko era of the 80s, which preached a capitalistic, 'greed is good'philosophy, Talking Heads reflected those anxieties ofdisenchantment. The borders around the stageascend, surrounding him in vertical chains.īyrneis no stranger to ennui, alienation and a general dissatisfaction withexistence. He bursts into Here, a song about connectionand – interpretively – looking after yourself. The only colour emanatesfrom the brain on the table. Even his hair, inevitably, is a wavy shade of grey. Thirty-six yearslater, in American Utopia, Byrne sits at a grey table on a grey Broadwaystage. When lead singer David Byrne entered that stagewearing a grey suit many sizes too big, his body seemed to wiggle inside the band’s funky, new wave sound. The1984 Talking Heads concert-movie Stop Making Sense is widely consideredthe best in the genre.
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