Same as it ever was?
With David Byrne, hardly.
Sure, the former Talking Heads frontman sang those signature lyrics from “Once in a Lifetime” in Milwaukee May 3, at a sold-out Miller High Life Theatre. Yes, several Talking Heads hits returned to the 21-song setlist – including “Slippery People” and “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)” – and true to Byrne’s style, his latest live production is tightly plotted and choreographed.
But with gently rendered profundity, and an offbeat songbook and imaginative staging singular to its creator, a David Byrne concert is not the same as any other rock show. The Milwaukee stop of his “Who Is The Sky?” tour, named after Byrne’s 2025 album, was heavy with inspired ideas, but literally light on its feet.
Elements from Byrne’s stellar “American Utopia” tour – which hit the Riverside Theater in 2018 before settling on Broadway and becoming the basis of a Spike Lee concert movie –have been carried over to the “Sky” tour, most notably the format. Byrne at the Miller High Life Theatre was again surrounded by fully mobile musicians – including four percussionists and up to five backing singers, a total of 13 people on stage, and not a single cord in sight – moving nimbly like a dance troupe crossed with a marching band. Keys were consistently part of the mix, but other instruments – violin, cello, saxophone, clarinet, guitars, bass, xylophone – slid in and out across an hour and 46 minutes.
The matching gray suits and bare feet from “Utopia” were replaced in Milwaukee for “Sky” by matching orange jumpsuits and sneakers. But the physical motion was again often as critical to the mood as the music itself. For “Once in a Lifetime” in Milwaukee, Byrne’s backing singers – through rubbery full-body swings, bends and shakes – became conduits for the funk. During “Life During Wartime,” the strides of all the players (sometimes concise and circular, other times sprawling across the stage with zig-zagging fluidity) symbolized the rendition’s tones and tempos, steady and cool at first, before speeding up as the music accelerated near the end.
And for “Psycho Killer,” white spotlights hovered over individual players grooving and jamming across every inch of the stage, culminating with the ensemble coming together – their individual bodies still distinguished with jagged, contorted expressions – around Byrne crouching in the center.
This “Killer” performance also had a playful visual – a “shadow” of Byrne that intentionally didn’t quite align with the movements of the 73-year-old man on stage. And that was part of the biggest distinction between the “Sky” show and “Utopia”: for the former, the use of wrap-around LED screens surrounding the stage.
The visuals enhanced the songs’ meanings and enhanced the whimsy. For “Strange Overtones,” Byrne and company played, sang and danced on a “city rooftop,” the lighting gradually transitioning from sunrise to twilight over the course of the song. “My Apartment Is My Friend” – Byrne’s sweet ode to safe spaces from the “Sky” album – was performed surrounded by a backdrop of his actual apartment. And for “Like Humans Do,” Byrne and the musicians’ movements were matched by identically dressed digital doppelgängers who each had the head of an animal, from a walrus to an eagle to a blowfish.
None of the visuals overshadowed frequently bold, brilliant rearrangements. “Independence Day” saw the concert’s musical director Ray Suen take a break from his frequently riveting guitar work to play a little Western swing on fiddle, with Byrne and the band slipping into country-line-dancing-style choreography. The “Sky” band deepened the tropical flavors for a live rendition of “(Nothing But) Flowers,” while “Houses in Motion” slid into psychedelic gospel jubilation led by Daniel Mintseris on keys. And singing show opener “Heaven” – performed sparingly with violin, cello and keys – Byrne accomplished the unthinkable. He created a live rendition even more moving than the powerful performance from Jonathan Demme’s immortal Talking Heads concert movie, “Stop Making Sense.”
“Sense” will forever be Talking Heads’ signature statement – the concert film and accompanying album may even be more widely celebrated at this point than the stellar studio discography. But Byrne showed in Milwaukee he’s still striving to be a better artist, and also a better human.
Ahead of “Sky” song “Moisturizing Thing,” Byrne acknowledged how he continues to make assumptions about people based on appearance, challenging himself, and his audience, to push back against that instinct.
For “T Shirt,” several messages flashing on those towering LED screens drew cheers – including “Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History,” “Make America Gay Again” and “No Kings” – while “Life During Wartime” was accompanied by footage of protests against ICE.
And “Heaven” at the start of the show was staged as if Byrne and three backing musicians were performing on the surface of the moon as the Earth slowly appeared on the screen behind them, with Byrne suggesting the Earth was our heaven, and that we must take care of it.
And we must take care of each other. That was the most frequent message of Byrne’s Milwaukee concert. He spoke about the power of love and kindness as resistance to oppression. He sang the praises of Italians, isolated in their apartments during the pandemic, for singing to each other from their balconies on Liberation Day, which commemorates the end of fascist rule in the country in 1945.
And before Byrne and the band surrounded a suspended, illuminated lightbulb for “Everybody’s Coming To My House,” he spoke about how toward the end of the pandemic, as gatherings started to happen again outside, he finally understood the meaning of the song.
“Despite all our differences, despite all the craziness, people love being around other people,” Byrne said he realized.
Especially for an incredible concert like this one.
Five takeaways from David Byrne’s Milwaukee concert, including his photos from the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame
David Byrne’s Miller High Life Theatre setlist
Contact Piet Levy at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: David Byrne bold and brilliant at sold-out Milwaukee concert
Reporting by Piet Levy, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
