Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By David Byrne, Nonesuch Records 2019.
American Utopia began life as an album by David Byrne before morphing into a Broadway musical.
The album reached #1 on the US album charts and Top 5 on the the Billboard chart. It also garnered a Grammy nomination.
The Broadway show developed out of the touring show that was put together to support the album and it includes material from the new album, as well as selections from Talking Heads and Byrne’s solo career.
The show stars Byrne along with an outstanding cast of supporting actors, dancers, and musicians.
There has been a spate of rock’n’roll luminaries playing Broadway recently and most have been enthusiastically received by the theatre world as well as the music press.
American Utopia is no exception.
The New York Times theatre critic said: “Dazzling, rapturous and jubilant. Byrne puts the central tenet of making contact with a world outside your mind into dynamic, sensory practice onstage.”
Hollywood Reporter commented: “Astonishing. A knockout celebration of music, dance and song. Pure bliss.”
And Rolling Stone reported: “A heady swirl of hope for our anxious times. The concert-theatre-dance spectacle finds solace in human connections…a tonic for our tumultuous times.”
David Byrne has assembled a diverse set of musicians for his backing band. They have been drawn from many different cultures and traditions and play a wide variety of instruments, many of which are rarely heard in pop/rock.
This enables Byrne to deliver an experience unlike many of his contemporaries. He has produced a milestone in world music and theatre – an area that he has been exploring for a long time.
I had the pleasure of seeing him at the Sydney Opera House a few years ago and his band was an eclectic mix of cultures and sounds back then.
