David Byrne Laughs at the Weirdness of Life on ‘Who Is the Sky?’

By now, fans see David Byrne as more than a quirky dude in a beloved legacy rock act. He’s a plainspoken public intellectual; an advocate for civic improvement and multi-cultural cooperation; a neurodiverse poet of the modern condition; an artistic éminence grise with fingers on multiple cultural pulses. In some ways, as the multi-format American Utopia project showed, a sort of non-denominational minister, with a goofy sense of humor, who one might look to for guidance, hope, encouragement and words of wisdom when things get scary.

Well, things are pretty scary right now, and on his first album of original songs since before the pandemic, Byrne is … writing musical comedy. “I met the Buddha at a downtown party,” he announces on the bouncy song of the same name; “he was hangin’ by the pastries and the canapés/Just stuffing himself like there was no tomorrow/With a beatific smile all over his face.” When the singer expresses concern, the deity schools him: “‘I’ve had to retire from that enlightenment biz/I don’t have the answers, and I never did/They think I can help them, but I’m not that smart/ so here, have a piece of this blue blueberry tart!’”

In “The Avant Garde,” the art school student-turned-pop singer acts out an aesthetic crisis over an intermittently jerky groove, rhyming “I saw a woman in a leotard” with “I’m not sure how I feel ‘bout the avant garde,” and positing “it doesn’t mean shit” in the chorus. On “Moisturizing Thing,” over cheeky string arrangements, his sweetheart says: “‘Hey David, put this on your skin/It says it’s anti-aging, anti-oxidant too/ go ahead, try it/Let’s see what it can do.’” Lo and behold, it transforms the singer into an apparent toddler. “My honey wakes up, she looks over and screams,” he recounts; “that lotion is magic, I look like I’m three.”

The storytelling style isn’t off-brand for a polymath who’s been making stage musicals for two decades, longer if you count Eighties collaborations with Twyla Tharpe (The Catherine Wheel) and the late Robert Wilson (Music for “The Knee Plays”). There’s also evident connection here with Byrne’s recent interactive Theater of the Mind project, and a rap sheet of role-play songwriting that stretches back to “Psycho Killer” and “Life During Wartime.”    

What made those songs work, and these, is the sound of Byrne’s mind cogitating inside them. Memoir seems to flicker through Who Is The Sky? — whose title, Byrne cops, comes from an AI voice transcription error of the phrase “who is this guy?” Worries over aging, about people sweating you for your creative choices, or hoping for words of wisdom to decode the world’s madness, seem like triggers Byrne might well have. And tbh, it’s refreshing, and hilarious, to hear Byrne sounding downright bitchy on “The Avant Garde,” since dude rarely dials things up past pointedly wry (not to mention having a CV full of his own mea culpas).  

There’s evident memoir, too, in the album’s love songs, considering Byrne’s imminent marriage to the writer/hedge-fund founder Mala Gaonkar, a fellow polymath (NB: his wedding dinner playlist is definitely worth a listen). On “What is the Reason For It?,” Byrne overthinks the phenomenon of love atop mariachi-brass abstracts with a charming assist from Paramore’s Hayley Williams, the latest of his 21^st -century-pop sidekicks — see also Robyn, Olivia Rodrigo and St. Vincent’s Annie Clark, a veteran Byrne collaborator who turns up here on “Ev’rybody Laughs,” the LP’s lead single and default mission statement. “She Explains Things To Me” is another love song, of sorts. It’s the record’s most touching and vulnerable moment, an expression of gratitude, with faintly comic frustration, for someone who enlarges your perspective, mansplaining re-imagined as man-listening.

Musically, Byrne taps into modern-ish pop strategies via Harry Styles producer Kid Harpoon. But being Byrne, he’s also enlisted the New York-based Ghost Train Orchestra, a chamber ensemble known for their interpretations of the late composer/street musician Moondog, and jazz-rock drummer Tom Skinner of Radiohead side-band, the Smile. If Byrne’s approach recalls that of Colors, Beck’s 2017 pop turn with Greg Kurstin, the touch here is lighter, with the multicultural rhythmic and melodic surprises that always brighten Byrne’s solo work. 

The risk with humor in songs, of course, is that jokes wear thin. But laughing’s pleasurable and undeniably therapeutic; it may even be a pop music trend (ie: Laufey’s salty punchlines, laugh-advocate Laraaji’s contributions to the new Big Thief album). Either way, Who Is The Sky? is an compelling invitation, like the one Byrne offered on the Talking Heads signature “Road to Nowhere” — beautifully covered by Brazilian expat Rogê on a forthcoming Heads tribute LP, it should be noted — to join him on what’s looking like a long ride into who knows what, singing and laughing as needed.