David Byrne’s Amer­i­can Utopia

Let’s see – cryp­to-fas­cist dem­a­gogues in seats of pow­er all over the world, a glob­al pan­dem­ic oblit­er­at­ing any notion of dai­ly life, a more metaphor­i­cal epi­dem­ic of police vio­lence, wide­spread infer­nos creep­ing across the Amer­i­can west and turn­ing the sky over Cal­i­for­nia an apoc­a­lyp­tic blood-crim­son, what else? Does the impend­ing release of a new film by McG count? At any rate, straits have nev­er been more dire for the human race, and everyone’s search­ing for a reprieve wher­ev­er they can get it.

Nat­u­ral­ly, we look to pop cul­ture to sat­is­fy that need, but the trou­ble starts when pop cul­ture tries to meet us halfway. So much of the enter­tain­ment pro­duced in express oppo­si­tion to Trump­ism, to Brex­it, to the ambi­ent awful­ness of the now, has fal­tered by posit­ing itself as a solu­tion. No mat­ter the esteem in which the pub­lic holds it, art can­not top­ple author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments or restore democ­ra­cy, and that which pur­ports to do so is doomed to suf­fo­cate in its own inflat­ed self-importance.

Start­ing from the brave-new-world title, Amer­i­can Utopia announces itself with a cer­tain urgency. One­time Talk­ing Heads front­man and ambas­sador of musi­cal good­will David Byrne explic­it­ly con­ceived the album that led to the con­cert tour that led to the Broad­way show that led to Spike Lee’s filmed ver­sion of the same as an effort to spread pos­i­tiv­i­ty. A stir­ring ren­di­tion of Janelle Monae’s protest song ​‘Hell You Talm­bout’, accom­pa­nied by named pho­tos of men and women of colour slain by police offi­cers, places that spir­it of buoy­an­cy in the grave con­text of the present. Byrne endeav­ours to shine a light in the dark­ness, no easy feat.

And yet he ris­es above by refrain­ing from mak­ing this project out to be any­thing more than it is: pure ela­tion in cel­e­bra­tion, of music and move­ment and the peo­ple cre­at­ing it. Byrne’s crowd work between songs some­times over­plays the hand of his polit­i­cal moti­va­tions, as in the odd appear­ance of Col­in Kaeper­nick or the brief tan­gent about low vot­er turnout.

For the most part, how­ev­er, he allows this gust of tran­scen­dent uplift to be sim­ply that. The invo­ca­tion of Black lives tak­en too soon serves to remind us that our striv­ing is nev­er fin­ished, that what hap­pens here can­not change the past or secure the future. Still, the per­for­mance puts forth kind­ness and har­mo­ny as the core nature of that striv­ing, with their songs as a hum­ble trib­ute. For Byrne, that’s plenty.

As if no time has passed at all, he con­jures the same mag­nan­i­mous charis­ma that’s made 1984’s Stop Mak­ing Sense the stan­dard against which all oth­er con­cert doc­u­men­taries are mea­sured. Byrne’s voice sounds warmer now, the affect­ed qual­i­ty of his deliv­ery hav­ing ripened into the invit­ing, friend­ly cadence of a kids’ show host you feel you can trust. He’s backed by a mul­ti­eth­nic, multi­na­tion­al ensem­ble who embody an appro­pri­ate­ly utopi­an ide­al for a more unit­ed Unit­ed States. The grey-suit­ed bat­tal­ion of Byrne’s dis­ci­ples man­age the impos­si­ble and rein­vig­o­rate ​‘Once In a Life­time’, an exis­ten­tial-cri­sis anthem expand­ed into a broad­er plea for redemp­tion before it’s too late for all of us.

It’s easy to shift the auteur des­ig­na­tion onto Byrne, but we’d be remiss to for­get that this is a Spike Lee joint. His direc­tion com­ple­ments the chore­og­ra­phy with unob­tru­sive tact, deploy­ing aer­i­al shots so expert­ly and inte­gral­ly that it seems unfair for the tick­et-hold­ers to have missed out on them. Close-ups cap­ture a detail of emo­tion also lost from even the non-cheap seats, as holy ecsta­sy wash­es over the faces of back­up dancers Chris Gia­r­mo and Ten­dayi Kuumba.

This film knows its pur­pose as a fleet­ing salve for the soul, and serves it gen­er­ous­ly. The momen­tous chal­lenges fac­ing our species won’t be swept away – if any­thing, they’re fore­ground­ed – but they’re made tol­er­a­ble if only for the hour and a half of rap­ture afford­ed by Byrne’s joy­ful nois­es. That’s a pre­cious thing, achieved only through his peer­less tal­ent and con­trol as a show­man. Which is just to say, same as it ever was.

David Byrne’s Amer­i­can Utopia is avail­able on Dig­i­tal Down­load on 14 Decem­ber and DVD on 11 Jan­u­ary, 2021.