The event takes place on London's Southbank during August
David Byrne, Meltdown
The first wave of names has been announced for this year’s Meltdown festival.
The festival – which this year is curated by David Byrne – runs at London’s Southbank Centre from Monday, August 17 – 30.
The line-up includes Anna Calvi, Young Marble Giants, Benjamin Clementine, Estrella Morente, Sunn O))), Atomic Bomb! The Music of William Onyeabor, David Longstreth, Matthew Herbert, Petra Haden and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, with more artists to be announced.
The festival, now in its 22nd year, finds Byrne following in the footsteps of previous directors that include Jarvis Cocker, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Ray Davies and Ornette Coleman.
You can find more details about this year’s Meltdown by clicking here.
The first wave of acts are:
Estrella Morente – Royal Festival Hall (August 17) Bianca Casady & The CIA – Queen Elizabeth Hall (17, 18) Sunn O))) + Phurpa – Royal Festival Hall (18) Psapp – Queen Elizabeth Hall (19) Atomic Bomb – Royal Festival Hall (20) Maria Rodés – Purcell Room (20) Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – Queen Elizabeth Hall (20) Benjamin Clementine – Queen Elizabeth Hall (21) Petra Haden – Purcell Room (21) Carmen Consoli – Royal Festival Hall (21) Anna Calvi – Queen Elizabeth Hall (22) John Luther Adams: Across A Distance – Southbank Centre (23) Matthew Herbert – Queen Elizabeth Hall (23) Lonnie Holley – Queen Elizabeth Hall (24) David Longstreth + Gabi – Royal Festival Hall (25) Francois & The Atlas Mountains + Zun Zun Egui – Queen Elizabeth Hall (25) Young Marble Giants – Royal Festival Hall (27) Gob Squad: Western Society – Purcell Room (27) Young Jean Lee: We’re Gonna Die – Queen Elizabeth Hall (30)
The former Talking Heads leader speaks in the new Uncut
(Photo by Danny North)
David Byrne discusses his work with Talking Heads, Brian Eno and St Vincent in the new issue of Uncut, dated August 2015 and out now.
The singer, songwriter and author, who is curating this summer’s Meltdown festival in London, also recalls his early experiences on a stage, playing in a group while still at school.
“I started performing in high school when I was 16 or so, in pop bands with friends, or at folk clubs,” Byrne says. “I took to it, but at that point I was more driven to do it: it was almost like I felt so socially inept that this was the only way I could express myself, by getting up on a stage and doing something, often somebody else’s song, but getting up onstage and asserting myself. And then retreating back into my shell the minute I’d step off stage.
“It was a curious kind of schizophrenic relationship. But if you don’t feel comfortable communicating any other way, if there’s an avenue open to you, you’ll take it.
“Then over the years, that whole thing lessened. And now, it’s a pleasure to step on stage. There’s no desperation. So there was some kind of weird edginess that got lost in that process, but something else was gained.”
The new issue of Uncut is out tomorrow.
Photo: Danny North
The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – goes on sale in the UK on July 9. Click here for more details.
David Byrne, BB King, Sly, Merle. "New York I love you…"
As we were finishing the new issue of Uncut the other day (It has David Byrne on the cover, and is on sale now), I was thinking about the first time I visited New York in the early 1990s. I fetched up with a band at CBGB one quiet soundcheck afternoon, sometime after the club’s heyday, when it was more likely to be hosting a major label showcase of some gauche Britpop aspirants rather than the authentic, unmediated voice of the New York streets.
Nevertheless, the club still had a certain cachet, however historical, which was why the band (and the NME journalist trying to put a new spin on an optimistic plot to take America by storm) were at CBGB in the first place. That day, Hilly Kristal and his dog were encountered, fleetingly. The toilets seemed more like a museum installation about punk interior design than an actual functioning WC. The critical moment occurred when the photographer and I tried to have a game of pool on the worn-out baize table near the door. As I leaned over to take my first shot, a fat cockroach scuttled out of one pocket, swerved the cueball, and disappeared down another. It was a magically horrible moment: a tale of mythic squalor where nothing really bad happened and no-one got hurt.
The legends of New York, of course, and the phenomenal music that has been made there, often come intertwined with grimmer details. The city’s old, edgy reputation is fetishised so much, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the only good art to come out of the place was dependent on a climate of risk. “New York felt so much more real,” Kim Gordon reminisced in Girl In A Band. “When people would ask [me] why Sonic Youth’s music was so dissonant, the answer was always the same: our music was realistic, and dynamic, because life was that way, filled with extremes.”
The truth, then, is probably a bit more complex than the stereotypes, something we’ve strived to take into account while compiling a list of 50 great New York albums for the new issue. It would be disingenuous to pretend that seediness hasn’t had any role to play – if we’d been so daft as to try and rank these 50 vivid records, I’m sure The Velvet Underground & Nico would have ended up somewhere near the top. But it’s a city, and a list, that contains multitudes: from George Gershwin to Nas; The Fania All-Stars to Jeff Buckley; Sinatra to Hendrix; Woody Allen to Talking Heads.
Our excuse for the list, of course, was to complement Andy Gill’s exclusive David Byrne interview, timed to coincide with his curating of the Meltdown festival in London this summer. I would say this, of course, but there’s a lot of good writing in this month’s Uncut: David Cavanagh on BB King and the blues at a crossroads; Laura Snapes on the fascinating Ezra Furman; John Lewis on the early days of Sly & The Family Stone; John Robinson on the multi-faceted Paul McCartney, Michael Bonner on “The Monsanto Years”. Plus, in a notably eclectic selection of interviewees, we can also boast Merle Haggard, Flying Saucer Attack, The Only Ones, The Monkees, Gordon Lightfoot, Mary Wilson and Paul Weller.
Oh, and the free CD features Sleaford Mods and Duke Ellington as well as Omar Souleyman, Stewart Lee and Rocket From The Crypt, besides some more predictable faithful retainers (Jason Isbell, Shelby Lynne, The Dream Syndicate). Something for everyone might be pushing it, a bit, but hopefully you appreciate Uncut’s horizons broadening.
The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – goes on sale in the UK on July 9. Click here for more details. The August 2015 issue of Uncut is in shops now.
The Institute Presents: Neurosociety is a collaboration with Mala Gaonkar
David Byrne, Meltdown
David Byrne has announced details of a new exhibition, The Institute Presents: Neurosociety, which will run from October 28 to May 31 at Pace Gallery in Menlo Park, California.
According to the New York Times, Byrne and his collaborator, Mala Gaonkar, a London hedge fund manager, have created room-size installations where visitors can undergo a number of cognitive experiments.
In a statement, Byrne and Gaonkar said: “Experiments, we feel, are a form of theatre. We have adopted elements of art installation and immersive theatre to present these experiences in ways we think will be as engaging for others as they have been for us.
“We traveled and met with many scientists who generously welcomed us, patiently answered our untutored questions, and creatively collaborated with us on this project. In the course of creating The Institute, the work of our partner labs has become both a window and a mirror through which we view ourselves and our larger interactions with the world.
“We wanted to share these concepts with as many people as possible.”
Demme directed Talking Heads‘ 1984 concert film, Stop Making Sense. Writing on his blog, Byrne said, “His view of the world was open, warm, animated and energetic”. You can read his tribute in full by clicking here.
Demme died from complications due to heart disease and oesophageal cancer.
Justin Timberlake also paid tribute to the filmmaker, who directed 2016 concert film Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids.
David Byrne has announced an upcoming solo tour – his first in nine years.
He will be performing a small number of shows on the American East Coast and South America, as well as European festivals including Inmusic in Croatia and Roskilde, Denmark.
A number of new songs, as well as more familiar tunes, will hit the setlist.
“I’m excited. This is the most ambitious show I’ve done since the shows that were filmed for Stop Making Sense, so fingers crossed,” he wrote on Twitter.
A small # of east coast shows! We’ll be doing some new songs, & many others that will, I assume, be familiar. I’m excited. This is the most ambitious show I’ve done since the shows that were filmed for Stop Making Sense, so fingers crossed. Info @ https://t.co/B8YgcnekRvpic.twitter.com/ehQ41X1MyD
The musician also detailed an ambitious visual approach for the show, centred on his band using mobile instruments.
“With everyone mobile, I realized the stage could be completely clear. If we could have the monitors in our ears, the amps off-stage and the lights up high, then we had the possibility of a completely empty space,” he told Brooklyn Vegan.
He then revealed the difficulty in hiding the “people and gear” around the stage, initially considering drapes before settling on lightweight chains.
“It takes color beautifully. Not only does it take color, one can cast shadows on the chain,” he said.
David Byrne’s tour dates below:
March 3: Red Bank, NJ, USA – Count Basie Theatre
March 4: Wilkes-Barre, PA, USA – F.M. Kirby Center For The Performing Art
March 6: Buffalo, NY, USA – Center For The Arts
March 7: Hershey, PA, USA – Hershey Theatre
March 9: Waterbury, CT, USA – Palace Theater
March 10: Kingston, NY, USA – Ulster Performing Arts Center
March 16: Santiago, Chile – Lollapalooza Chile
March 18 Buenos Aires, Argentina – Lollapalooza Argentina
June 25: Zagreb, Croatia – Inmusic Festival
July 06: Roskilde, Denmark – Roskilde Festival
Brian Eno, Sampha and Oneohtrix Point Never are among the collaborators
Photo by Jody Rogac
David Byrne will release a new album on March 9. American Utopia is a follow-up to 2012’s St Vincent collaboration Love This Giant, and Byrne’s first solo album since 2004’s Grown Backwards. You can listen to lead single “Everybody’s Coming To My House”, co-written with Brian Eno, here:
As well as continuing Byrne’s long musical partnership with Eno, American Utopia’s other collaborators include Daniel Lopatin (AKA Oneohtrix Point Never), Jam City, Jack Peñate and Sampha.
Regarding the title, Byrne says: “These songs don’t describe this imaginary and possibly impossible place, but rather they attempt to describe the world we live in now. That world… immediately commands us to ask ourselves: Is there another way? A better way? A different way?”
He adds: “I am as mystified as any of us – I have no prescriptions or surefire answers – but I sense that I am not the only one asking, wondering and still willing to hold on to some tiny bit of hope, still willing to not succumb entirely to despair or cynicism. It’s not easy, but music helps.”
American Utopia tracklisting:
I Dance Like This Gasoline And Dirty Sheets Every Day Is A Miracle Dog’s Mind This Is That It’s Not Dark Up Here Bullet Doing The Right Thing Everybody’s Coming To My House Here
Featuring Cavern Of Anti-Matter, David Byrne, Chris Carter and Stick In The Wheel...
Another good week, I think. I hate to pick favourites, but I really enjoyed the Stick In The Wheel track – you can read more about them in the next Uncut, incidentally – and the belated return to active service of Chris Carter. Otherwise, a typically strong showing from old favourites like David Byrne, Dirtmusic and Nightmares On Wax. Oh, yeah, and that Jack White guy.
Excuse the tease, but we’ll be back next week with a new issue – which includes what we’re proud to say is one of our strongest free CDs. Look out for more news on that soon…
Pop polymath delivers surreal state of the nation address
Listen to “Don’t Worry About the Government” from Talking Heads‘ 1977 debut and you could take it as a straight homage to Jonathan Richman: “I smell the pine trees and the peaches in the woods / I see the pinecones that fall by the highway”. It’s only gradually that the pastoral takes on sinister overtones: “I see the states, across this big nation / I see the laws made in Washington, D.C / I think of the ones I consider my favorites / I think of the people that are working for me”. It dawns on you that Byrne is singing from the perspective of the President, or even Government itself, as a kind of anonymous, cybernetic Greek chorus. “Don’t you worry about me,” it lulls its anxious citizens, like HAL 9000 in 2001 “I wouldn’t worry about me.”
The song established a signature tone of creepy naivety that has persisted through Byrne’s work, from the ecstatic dread of “Once in a Lifetime”, through the giddy doom of “Road to Nowhere”, right up to the title track of the 2008 Brian Eno collaboration Everything That Happens… It’s a tone that’s all over American Utopia, which considers the state of the union with a surreal impassiveness. It reaches its apogee on “Dog’s Mind”. It begins with portentous piano chords before building to a gospel chorus sung by Government clerks, gazing out upon “a place where nothing matters / Where the wheels of progress turn / Where reality is fiction / But the dogs show no concern”. Is this where the grand experiment of America winds up, wonders the album – with the citizens adrift in doggy dreams, the judiciary hungover, the media quiescent, while the Presidential fiasco proceeds unchecked?
These are good questions for a great American artist like David Byrne to be pondering, but I’m not sure American Utopia adds up to a great piece of work. It is at some level, like Everything That Happens… another collaboration with Brian Eno. That album had a dated feel, but there was a great charm in hearing the massed Enoid choir once again supporting Byrne’s quizzical lead. This time around the tracks are based on drum tracks that Eno programmed, but he takes a back seat. It makes you wonder whether Byrne needs more active, engaged collaborators (like the other Talking Heads, Eno, or St Vincent) to really provoke him to greatness.
Left to his own devices, Byrne comes home to a screwball hymnal mode that for all the lyrical left turns, feels a little too predictable. The album begins with the twinkly chords of “I Dance Like This”, an uncanny Philip K Dick vision of the day after the end of the world: “ a fitness consultant / in the negative zone / wandering the city / looking for home”. The chorus is a jarring intrusion, like the song is being given ECT, but it feels arbitrary, the result of an algorithmic decision, rather than anything dramatically disturbed.
“Gasoline and Dirty Streets” is better, entering with synthetic sitar and slapback bass, backed with eerie saxophone and harmonica, one of a number of tracks recalling Talking Heads at their most polished circa “Sax and Violins”. It describes a battle between a woman “who is royalty” (for whom “freedom costs too much”) and “a man who would be king”. Like much of the album it feels overdetermined by recent American politics. At its worst, on “Every Day is a Miracle”, this leads to childlike, slightly pious fables which, which like the political squibs of George Saunders, feel like collaborations between Dr Seuss and Kafka.
If you don’t much care for green eggs and ham, the two sides of the album end with a couple of the best songs of Byrne’s storied career. “This is that” is a yearning tribute to the power of music, sung over synthetic chinese zither, which aquiesces to the clichés we use to describe “that moment when the melody ends and the rhythm kicks in”: “that’s when I call you up, that’s when my river overflows” Byrne sings, falling back, unapologetically, on old soul tropes of transcendence.
The final “Here” is the one track credited to Byrne and Daniel Lopatin, better known as electronic auteur Oneohtrix Point Never, who came on board in the project late in the day. Over roilingdrones and a rhythm track reminiscent of Japan circa Tin Drum, Byrne describes some unnamed territory – possibly a map of neural pathways: “Here is an area—of great confusion / Here is a section—that’s extremely precise / And here is an area—that needs attention / Here’s the connection—with the opposite side”. Maybe due to Lopatin’s involvement it strikes a new, subtler, deeper note on the record. But once again it’s reminiscent of early Talking Heads – in this case “The Big Country” from 1978’s More Songs About Buildings And Food, with its alienated airplane passenger, surveying the flyover counties: “Then we come to the farmlands, and the undeveloped areas / And I have learned how these things work together.” Back then Byrne sang “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.” This time round he yearns for the making rather than the unmaking of sense, reconciliation, intimacy and the acceptance of the here and now. Maybe, he suggests, this humble, pragmatic ideal is the real American Utopia.
The event takes place on London's Southbank during August
David Byrne, Meltdown
The first wave of names has been announced for this year’s Meltdown festival.
The festival – which this year is curated by David Byrne – runs at London’s Southbank Centre from Monday, August 17 – 30.
The line-up includes Anna Calvi, Young Marble Giants, Benjamin Clementine, Estrella Morente, Sunn O))), Atomic Bomb! The Music of William Onyeabor, David Longstreth, Matthew Herbert, Petra Haden and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, with more artists to be announced.
The festival, now in its 22nd year, finds Byrne following in the footsteps of previous directors that include Jarvis Cocker, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Ray Davies and Ornette Coleman.
You can find more details about this year’s Meltdown by clicking here.
The first wave of acts are:
Estrella Morente – Royal Festival Hall (August 17) Bianca Casady & The CIA – Queen Elizabeth Hall (17, 18) Sunn O))) + Phurpa – Royal Festival Hall (18) Psapp – Queen Elizabeth Hall (19) Atomic Bomb – Royal Festival Hall (20) Maria Rodés – Purcell Room (20) Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – Queen Elizabeth Hall (20) Benjamin Clementine – Queen Elizabeth Hall (21) Petra Haden – Purcell Room (21) Carmen Consoli – Royal Festival Hall (21) Anna Calvi – Queen Elizabeth Hall (22) John Luther Adams: Across A Distance – Southbank Centre (23) Matthew Herbert – Queen Elizabeth Hall (23) Lonnie Holley – Queen Elizabeth Hall (24) David Longstreth + Gabi – Royal Festival Hall (25) Francois & The Atlas Mountains + Zun Zun Egui – Queen Elizabeth Hall (25) Young Marble Giants – Royal Festival Hall (27) Gob Squad: Western Society – Purcell Room (27) Young Jean Lee: We’re Gonna Die – Queen Elizabeth Hall (30)
The former Talking Heads leader speaks in the new Uncut
(Photo by Danny North)
David Byrne discusses his work with Talking Heads, Brian Eno and St Vincent in the new issue of Uncut, dated August 2015 and out now.
The singer, songwriter and author, who is curating this summer’s Meltdown festival in London, also recalls his early experiences on a stage, playing in a group while still at school.
“I started performing in high school when I was 16 or so, in pop bands with friends, or at folk clubs,” Byrne says. “I took to it, but at that point I was more driven to do it: it was almost like I felt so socially inept that this was the only way I could express myself, by getting up on a stage and doing something, often somebody else’s song, but getting up onstage and asserting myself. And then retreating back into my shell the minute I’d step off stage.
“It was a curious kind of schizophrenic relationship. But if you don’t feel comfortable communicating any other way, if there’s an avenue open to you, you’ll take it.
“Then over the years, that whole thing lessened. And now, it’s a pleasure to step on stage. There’s no desperation. So there was some kind of weird edginess that got lost in that process, but something else was gained.”
The new issue of Uncut is out tomorrow.
Photo: Danny North
The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – goes on sale in the UK on July 9. Click here for more details.
David Byrne, BB King, Sly, Merle. "New York I love you…"
As we were finishing the new issue of Uncut the other day (It has David Byrne on the cover, and is on sale now), I was thinking about the first time I visited New York in the early 1990s. I fetched up with a band at CBGB one quiet soundcheck afternoon, sometime after the club’s heyday, when it was more likely to be hosting a major label showcase of some gauche Britpop aspirants rather than the authentic, unmediated voice of the New York streets.
Nevertheless, the club still had a certain cachet, however historical, which was why the band (and the NME journalist trying to put a new spin on an optimistic plot to take America by storm) were at CBGB in the first place. That day, Hilly Kristal and his dog were encountered, fleetingly. The toilets seemed more like a museum installation about punk interior design than an actual functioning WC. The critical moment occurred when the photographer and I tried to have a game of pool on the worn-out baize table near the door. As I leaned over to take my first shot, a fat cockroach scuttled out of one pocket, swerved the cueball, and disappeared down another. It was a magically horrible moment: a tale of mythic squalor where nothing really bad happened and no-one got hurt.
The legends of New York, of course, and the phenomenal music that has been made there, often come intertwined with grimmer details. The city’s old, edgy reputation is fetishised so much, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the only good art to come out of the place was dependent on a climate of risk. “New York felt so much more real,” Kim Gordon reminisced in Girl In A Band. “When people would ask [me] why Sonic Youth’s music was so dissonant, the answer was always the same: our music was realistic, and dynamic, because life was that way, filled with extremes.”
The truth, then, is probably a bit more complex than the stereotypes, something we’ve strived to take into account while compiling a list of 50 great New York albums for the new issue. It would be disingenuous to pretend that seediness hasn’t had any role to play – if we’d been so daft as to try and rank these 50 vivid records, I’m sure The Velvet Underground & Nico would have ended up somewhere near the top. But it’s a city, and a list, that contains multitudes: from George Gershwin to Nas; The Fania All-Stars to Jeff Buckley; Sinatra to Hendrix; Woody Allen to Talking Heads.
Our excuse for the list, of course, was to complement Andy Gill’s exclusive David Byrne interview, timed to coincide with his curating of the Meltdown festival in London this summer. I would say this, of course, but there’s a lot of good writing in this month’s Uncut: David Cavanagh on BB King and the blues at a crossroads; Laura Snapes on the fascinating Ezra Furman; John Lewis on the early days of Sly & The Family Stone; John Robinson on the multi-faceted Paul McCartney, Michael Bonner on “The Monsanto Years”. Plus, in a notably eclectic selection of interviewees, we can also boast Merle Haggard, Flying Saucer Attack, The Only Ones, The Monkees, Gordon Lightfoot, Mary Wilson and Paul Weller.
Oh, and the free CD features Sleaford Mods and Duke Ellington as well as Omar Souleyman, Stewart Lee and Rocket From The Crypt, besides some more predictable faithful retainers (Jason Isbell, Shelby Lynne, The Dream Syndicate). Something for everyone might be pushing it, a bit, but hopefully you appreciate Uncut’s horizons broadening.
The History Of Rock – a brand new monthly magazine from the makers of Uncut – goes on sale in the UK on July 9. Click here for more details. The August 2015 issue of Uncut is in shops now.
The Institute Presents: Neurosociety is a collaboration with Mala Gaonkar
David Byrne, Meltdown
David Byrne has announced details of a new exhibition, The Institute Presents: Neurosociety, which will run from October 28 to May 31 at Pace Gallery in Menlo Park, California.
According to the New York Times, Byrne and his collaborator, Mala Gaonkar, a London hedge fund manager, have created room-size installations where visitors can undergo a number of cognitive experiments.
In a statement, Byrne and Gaonkar said: “Experiments, we feel, are a form of theatre. We have adopted elements of art installation and immersive theatre to present these experiences in ways we think will be as engaging for others as they have been for us.
“We traveled and met with many scientists who generously welcomed us, patiently answered our untutored questions, and creatively collaborated with us on this project. In the course of creating The Institute, the work of our partner labs has become both a window and a mirror through which we view ourselves and our larger interactions with the world.
“We wanted to share these concepts with as many people as possible.”
Demme directed Talking Heads‘ 1984 concert film, Stop Making Sense. Writing on his blog, Byrne said, “His view of the world was open, warm, animated and energetic”. You can read his tribute in full by clicking here.
Demme died from complications due to heart disease and oesophageal cancer.
Justin Timberlake also paid tribute to the filmmaker, who directed 2016 concert film Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids.
David Byrne has announced an upcoming solo tour – his first in nine years.
He will be performing a small number of shows on the American East Coast and South America, as well as European festivals including Inmusic in Croatia and Roskilde, Denmark.
A number of new songs, as well as more familiar tunes, will hit the setlist.
“I’m excited. This is the most ambitious show I’ve done since the shows that were filmed for Stop Making Sense, so fingers crossed,” he wrote on Twitter.
A small # of east coast shows! We’ll be doing some new songs, & many others that will, I assume, be familiar. I’m excited. This is the most ambitious show I’ve done since the shows that were filmed for Stop Making Sense, so fingers crossed. Info @ https://t.co/B8YgcnekRvpic.twitter.com/ehQ41X1MyD
The musician also detailed an ambitious visual approach for the show, centred on his band using mobile instruments.
“With everyone mobile, I realized the stage could be completely clear. If we could have the monitors in our ears, the amps off-stage and the lights up high, then we had the possibility of a completely empty space,” he told Brooklyn Vegan.
He then revealed the difficulty in hiding the “people and gear” around the stage, initially considering drapes before settling on lightweight chains.
“It takes color beautifully. Not only does it take color, one can cast shadows on the chain,” he said.
David Byrne’s tour dates below:
March 3: Red Bank, NJ, USA – Count Basie Theatre
March 4: Wilkes-Barre, PA, USA – F.M. Kirby Center For The Performing Art
March 6: Buffalo, NY, USA – Center For The Arts
March 7: Hershey, PA, USA – Hershey Theatre
March 9: Waterbury, CT, USA – Palace Theater
March 10: Kingston, NY, USA – Ulster Performing Arts Center
March 16: Santiago, Chile – Lollapalooza Chile
March 18 Buenos Aires, Argentina – Lollapalooza Argentina
June 25: Zagreb, Croatia – Inmusic Festival
July 06: Roskilde, Denmark – Roskilde Festival
Brian Eno, Sampha and Oneohtrix Point Never are among the collaborators
Photo by Jody Rogac
David Byrne will release a new album on March 9. American Utopia is a follow-up to 2012’s St Vincent collaboration Love This Giant, and Byrne’s first solo album since 2004’s Grown Backwards. You can listen to lead single “Everybody’s Coming To My House”, co-written with Brian Eno, here:
As well as continuing Byrne’s long musical partnership with Eno, American Utopia’s other collaborators include Daniel Lopatin (AKA Oneohtrix Point Never), Jam City, Jack Peñate and Sampha.
Regarding the title, Byrne says: “These songs don’t describe this imaginary and possibly impossible place, but rather they attempt to describe the world we live in now. That world… immediately commands us to ask ourselves: Is there another way? A better way? A different way?”
He adds: “I am as mystified as any of us – I have no prescriptions or surefire answers – but I sense that I am not the only one asking, wondering and still willing to hold on to some tiny bit of hope, still willing to not succumb entirely to despair or cynicism. It’s not easy, but music helps.”
American Utopia tracklisting:
I Dance Like This Gasoline And Dirty Sheets Every Day Is A Miracle Dog’s Mind This Is That It’s Not Dark Up Here Bullet Doing The Right Thing Everybody’s Coming To My House Here
Featuring Cavern Of Anti-Matter, David Byrne, Chris Carter and Stick In The Wheel...
Another good week, I think. I hate to pick favourites, but I really enjoyed the Stick In The Wheel track – you can read more about them in the next Uncut, incidentally – and the belated return to active service of Chris Carter. Otherwise, a typically strong showing from old favourites like David Byrne, Dirtmusic and Nightmares On Wax. Oh, yeah, and that Jack White guy.
Excuse the tease, but we’ll be back next week with a new issue – which includes what we’re proud to say is one of our strongest free CDs. Look out for more news on that soon…
Pop polymath delivers surreal state of the nation address
Listen to “Don’t Worry About the Government” from Talking Heads‘ 1977 debut album and you could take it as a straight homage to Jonathan Richman: “I smell the pine trees and the peaches in the woods / I see the pinecones that fall by the highway”. It’s only gradually that the pastoral takes on sinister overtones: “I see the states, across this big nation / I see the laws made in Washington, D.C / I think of the ones I consider my favorites / I think of the people that are working for me”. It dawns on you that Byrne is singing from the perspective of the President, or even Government itself, as a kind of anonymous, cybernetic Greek chorus. “Don’t you worry about me,” it lulls its anxious citizens, like HAL 9000 in 2001 “I wouldn’t worry about me.”
The song established a signature tone of creepy naivety that has persisted through Byrne’s work, from the ecstatic dread of “Once in a Lifetime”, through the giddy doom of “Road to Nowhere”, right up to the title track of the 2008 Brian Eno collaboration Everything That Happens… It’s a tone that’s all over American Utopia, which considers the state of the union with a surreal impassiveness. It reaches its apogee on “Dog’s Mind”. It begins with portentous piano chords before building to a gospel chorus sung by Government clerks, gazing out upon “a place where nothing matters / Where the wheels of progress turn / Where reality is fiction / But the dogs show no concern”. Is this where the grand experiment of America winds up, wonders the album – with the citizens adrift in doggy dreams, the judiciary hungover, the media quiescent, while the Presidential fiasco proceeds unchecked?
These are good questions for a great American artist like David Byrne to be pondering, but I’m not sure American Utopia adds up to a great piece of work. It is at some level, like Everything That Happens… That album had a dated feel, but there was a great charm in hearing the massed Enoid choir once again supporting Byrne’s quizzical lead. This time around the tracks are based on drum tracks that Eno programmed, but he takes a back seat. It makes you wonder whether Byrne needs more active, engaged collaborators (like the other Talking Heads, Eno, or St Vincent) to really provoke him to greatness.
Left to his own devices, Byrne comes home to a screwball hymnal mode that for all the lyrical left turns, feels a little too predictable. The album begins with the twinkly chords of “I Dance Like This”, an uncanny Philip K Dick vision of the day after the end of the world: “ a fitness consultant / in the negative zone / wandering the city / looking for home”. The chorus is a jarring intrusion, like the song is being given ECT, but it feels arbitrary, the result of an algorithmic decision, rather than anything dramatically disturbed.
“Gasoline and Dirty Streets” is better, entering with synthetic sitar and slapback bass, backed with eerie saxophone and harmonica, one of a number of tracks recalling Talking Heads at their most polished circa “Sax and Violins”. It describes a battle between a woman “who is royalty” (for whom “freedom costs too much”) and “a man who would be king”. Like much of the album it feels overdetermined by recent American politics. At its worst, on “Every Day is a Miracle”, this leads to childlike, slightly pious fables which, which like the political squibs of George Saunders, feel like collaborations between Dr Seuss and Kafka.
If you don’t much care for green eggs and ham, the two sides of the album end with a couple of the best songs of Byrne’s storied career. “This is that” is a yearning tribute to the power of music, sung over synthetic chinese zither, which aquiesces to the clichés we use to describe “that moment when the melody ends and the rhythm kicks in”: “that’s when I call you up, that’s when my river overflows” Byrne sings, falling back, unapologetically, on old soul tropes of transcendence.
The final “Here” is the one track credited to Byrne and Daniel Lopatin, better known as electronic auteur Oneohtrix Point Never, who came on board in the project late in the day. Over roilingdrones and a rhythm track reminiscent of Japan circa Tin Drum, Byrne describes some unnamed territory – possibly a map of neural pathways: “Here is an area—of great confusion / Here is a section—that’s extremely precise / And here is an area—that needs attention / Here’s the connection—with the opposite side”. Maybe due to Lopatin’s involvement it strikes a new, subtler, deeper note on the record. But once again it’s reminiscent of early Talking Heads – in this case “The Big Country” from 1978’s More Songs About Buildings And Food, with its alienated airplane passenger, surveying the flyover counties: “Then we come to the farmlands, and the undeveloped areas / And I have learned how these things work together.” Back then Byrne sang “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.” This time round he yearns for the making rather than the unmaking of sense, reconciliation, intimacy and the acceptance of the here and now. Maybe, he suggests, this humble, pragmatic ideal is the real American Utopia.
Features six songs recorded at New York's King's Theatre in September
David Byrne has today released six tracks recorded live on his acclaimed American Utopia tour at New York’s Kings Theatre in September.
They have been issued as a standalone EP called “…The Best Live Show of All Time” — NME (yes, that really is the title) as well as being added to the Deluxe Edition of American Utopia, which you can hear below:
The first wave of names has been announced for this year’s Meltdown festival.
The festival – which this year is curated by David Byrne – runs at London’s Southbank Centre from Monday, August 17 – 30.
The line-up includes Anna Calvi, Young Marble Giants, Benjamin Clementine, Estrella Morente, Sunn O))), Atomic Bomb! The Music of William Onyeabor, David Longstreth, Matthew Herbert, Petra Haden and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, with more artists to be announced.
The festival, now in its 22nd year, finds Byrne following in the footsteps of previous directors that include Jarvis Cocker, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Yoko Ono, Ray Davies and Ornette Coleman.
You can find more details about this year’s Meltdown by clicking here.
The first wave of acts are:
Estrella Morente – Royal Festival Hall (August 17) Bianca Casady & The CIA – Queen Elizabeth Hall (17, 18) Sunn O))) + Phurpa – Royal Festival Hall (18) Psapp – Queen Elizabeth Hall (19) Atomic Bomb – Royal Festival Hall (20) Maria Rodés – Purcell Room (20) Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – Queen Elizabeth Hall (20) Benjamin Clementine – Queen Elizabeth Hall (21) Petra Haden – Purcell Room (21) Carmen Consoli – Royal Festival Hall (21) Anna Calvi – Queen Elizabeth Hall (22) John Luther Adams: Across A Distance – Southbank Centre (23) Matthew Herbert – Queen Elizabeth Hall (23) Lonnie Holley – Queen Elizabeth Hall (24) David Longstreth + Gabi – Royal Festival Hall (25) Francois & The Atlas Mountains + Zun Zun Egui – Queen Elizabeth Hall (25) Young Marble Giants – Royal Festival Hall (27) Gob Squad: Western Society – Purcell Room (27) Young Jean Lee: We’re Gonna Die – Queen Elizabeth Hall (30)
