David Byrne review — joy, movement and collective resolve

“And as things fell apart / Nobody paid much attention,” David Byrne sings with a gentle shake of his head during (Nothing But) Flowers. That line had teeth back in 1988; in 2026 it takes your hand off. Byrne doesn’t oversell it — the spectacle is less a telling-off than a reminder of what happiness felt like, of what joy in movement feels like.

He is surrounded by a large ensemble in matching blue suits: dancers who sing, percussionists who dance, guitarists who also shred on a violin. Byrne continues his career-long obsession with blurring the line between live show and theatrical art-piece. At the rear of the stage, huge concave screens provide a continual source of wonder, from the sun setting over a cityscape during Strange Overtones to a pogoing Byrne picked out in blue against saturated orange in Once in a Lifetime.

With a set list built around elastic bass and polyrhythms — from Talking Heads’ Slippery People to What Is the Reason for It?

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