David Byrne is an undisputed legend, for me at least. His music and words have inspired and entertained millions of people for over five decades now. The latest endeavour for him was a Broadway residency of his popular concert run promoting and performing his latest album American Utopia, a terrific album encapsulating the experimentation and skill that has coloured Byrne’s entire career, from his time with his band Talking Heads, to his solo work. This concert performance was then filmed by another legend of his own medium, Spike Lee. Once more a seminal performance of Bryne’s extraordinary work has been captured by a similarly extraordinary director, as was the case with Stop Making Sense with Jonathon Demme, and once more an astounding piece of musical film has been created.

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Let’s begin with what we are filming. The audacity of the world tour that Byrne set himself upon for this piece is incredible to say the least and in many ways reflects the timeless resilience and ability to entertain that he has maintained his entire career. In this case what ends up being filmed by Lee is a performance of the strictly limited Broadway run of his American utopia tour, at the Hudson theatre in 2019/2020. The piece is relentlessly elaborate and expansive in its scope, placing us in a beautiful backdrop set which works as a dance floor and also a blank canvas for the images of light and choreography that we are about to put upon it. Byrne does lift certain elements from his staging concepts for Stop Making Sense with the focus here similarly being upon building the ensemble world bit by bit, player by player. It is just as effective here as it was back then, focussing more so on the building of an ensemble, rather than a meta deconstructing the facsimile of a concert performance.  Along with Byrne is an immensely talented ensemble of 11 other musicians, all beautifully clothed in grey suits. There is the old anecdote of Chris Frantz regarding Byrne’s choice to wear his famous grey suit in Stop Making Sense to standout from the ensemble. Here Byrne dons another grey suit to instead create absolutely no differentials amongst the ensemble, this is a film and performance about unity and every detail in it reflects that, and the piece is all the more overly powerful because of it. The ensemble are all donning cutting edge wireless technology to remove all cables and speakers from the stage, allowing for the marvellous choreography and musical staging of Annie-B Parson. The work of Parson is so freeing and dynamic that the entire evening has a stunning propellant nature to it that accompanies the music exceptionally frankly.

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The concert has Alex timbers as its production consultant and it is clear that we are seeing a wholly defined vision of a concert. Intermittently in-between songs Byrne will address the audience with non-sequator monologues that all begin with the smallest of observations, before culminating in profound and immensely thought-provoking comments on our current society. The culmination of this political and hopeful commentary is an ungodly rousing rendition of Janelle Monae’s Hell you Talmbout, a protest song relaying the names of just some of those made victims to police brutality. One of the most famous Talking Heads songs is of course Burning Down the House, this concert has an incredible performance of that very song. However it is this Monae cover that truly burns down the house and ultimately fills us with hope that we can rebuild one of hope and peace. But as much as Byrne is hopeful in his speeches and music, he is also resourceful, giving his audience facts and blunt comments giving resourcefulness to the dreams of unity that remain the crux of the feature. The set-list itself is a terrific collation of material spanning Byrne’s entire career, from solo work, his work with Brian Eno, Talking Heads material, aswell as the immensely powerful aforementioned Janelle Monae cover. This cover is paired by Lee by repeated images of the deceased that are named, this paired with the visuals, the music and the following number leads to one of the most affecting moments I’ve seen in a film this year. It is a testament to the power of the sequence that the perhaps shoddy additional editing in it doesn’t take you out of it nearly as much as it would in a perhaps lesser concert. Standouts are frequent amongst the numbers and although musically you still can’t beat those Talking Heads classics (Road to Nowhere is sublime as the film’s finale), some of the best numbers are developed with material from the back catalogue and the American utopia album, with Lazy and I Should Watch TV being some of the most visually memorable pieces in the film.

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Now let’s talk about the filming. The film is directed and produced by none other than  critically acclaimed filmmaker Spike Lee, making this delightful David Byrne concert film indeed “a Spike Lee joint”. All the dynamism and political power that has made Lee’s career is present here and fuels the performance to take on an entirely new breath of life. Concert films I find are a stunningly hard task and many take the easy route and simply hold back, focussing the camera, with a few sparring close-ups. This is the not the tact that Lee has taken and the film is more so the better for it. The cinematography of Ellen Kuras places us directly in the middle of the stage many times and knows exactly when to pull back and directly when to focus in. As previously mentioned the lighting and set are some of the show’s best features and Kuras takes great pleasure in presenting these facets in the best way possible for film. This paired with Adam Gough’s sensationally direct and varied editing makes the presentation streamlined and enormously filmic. One of Lee’s most frequent camera angles used is a glorious  wide shot of the stage, lit in such a manner against the beautiful light blues and whites of the stage and costumes that the shadows of our audience gloriously bring us into the theatre. There are many moments in fact where the triumphant leaping to the feet of certain fans upon certain musical cues gives one the exact sort of feeling that any great concert should do – the feeling that you frankly don’t want to be anywhere else listening to anybody else. Lee’s filming of this film will let us have that feeling forever and for that I can only thank him.

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An uproarious 9/10. Byrne, Lee, Timbers, Carson and all of the rest of the litany of people involved in this grand ensemble have made that most incredible of things; a film absolutely perfect for our exact time and place, whilst also being undoubtedly (even regrettably at times) timeless. A tour-de-force of music, dynamic filmmaking and ultimately a showcase of the incredible power and unequivocal genius of David Byrne. Bravo, you absolute legend.  You did it again. Bravo.

P.S The thing about comparison is that you only ever do so when the product is lesser and although I don’t think this is a product that I am willing to say is better than Demme’s Stop Making Sense. I am certainly willing to commit to saying that on a creative, performance and film level it is at the very least par with Demme’s film. Hell, it even has its own light bulb number, although there is less choreography with it this time. But, as an upcoming article will illuminate I hope, I still feel that Stop Making Sense is the greatest concert film ever made and perhaps one of the finest films too. 

-         -  Thomas Carruthers