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........