![]() Oh, and you might be advised to clear the furniture and get ready to dance your ass off. Even if you don’t consider yourself a fan of either the Heads or Byrne’s solo work - an eclectic musical output spanning more than 40 years - just shut up and watch, with the volume cranked loud. 17 on HBO and HBO Max, where it’s impossible not to imagine it becoming a high-rotation repeat-viewing staple. premiere at the New York Film Festival, American Utopia will debut Oct. But the synergy here between filmmaker and subject - from the avant-funk grooves to the spirit of inclusivity and the urge to heal a broken nation - is simply spectacular.įollowing its Toronto opening slot and U.S. Lee’s knack for distilling the energy of live performance is no secret, for example in his terrific 2009 film of the unconventional Broadway musical Passing Strange. What both films share is a harmonious fusion between the quizzical intelligence, the wit, the humanity and the ebullient musicality of what’s happening onstage and the dizzying creativity of the team capturing it for the screen. So it’s both miraculous and entirely fitting that director Spike Lee teams with the former frontman of that influential new wave band to deliver an immersive movie experience arguably equal to its illustrious predecessor in David Byrne’s American Utopia. American Utopia is an album of beautiful and witty surfaces stretched over a sea of troubled waters, and if Byrne is rarely inclined to give direct answers to the questions he asks, it's obvious this isn't a joke, it's an ambitious work from an important American artist.Despite the countless technological innovations in the 36 years since the release of Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense, that iconoclastic time capsule of a 1983 Talking Heads show is still considered by many to be the greatest rock concert film ever made. In concept, American Utopia bears faint resemblance to the cheerfully odd average Americans who populated Talking Heads' 1986 album True Stories (and Byrne's accompanying feature film), but this album's wit is more pointed, the tone is cooler and less secure, and the cumulative effect less joyous and a bit more puzzled about what awaits us with the next dawn. ![]() The final product is a sonic crazy quilt that's rich and evocative, by turns ominous and seductive, and the stylistic shape-shifting that dominates these tracks suits the many moods of Byrne's characters very well indeed. ![]() (Animals, too - a variety of critters pop up in "Every Day Is a Miracle," and "Dog's Mind" imagines how our canine friends view the world.) Not everything in Byrne's Bizarro World America is a good time, especially on "Gasoline and Dirty Sheets" and "This Is That." But much of this album portrays folks who are both dazzled and overwhelmed by the abundant possibilities presented in "It's Not Dark Up Here," "Everybody's Coming to My House," and "I Dance Like This." American Utopia began as a series of rhythm tracks created by Brian Eno, which Byrne then fashioned into songs, with a variety of other collaborators reshaping the results, including co-producers Rodaidh McDonald and Patrick Dillett and musicians Daniel Lopatin, Thomas Bartlett, and Joey Waronker. At a time when America has been thrown into a state of chaos - something Byrne witnessed and creatively reacted to as an artist during the Reagan era - here he imagines what appears to be an alternate version of the United States and the people who live in it. "Is this meant ironically? Is it a joke? Do I mean this seriously? In what way?" David Byrne seems to be simultaneously inviting and acknowledging some likely reactions to his 2018 album, American Utopia, in his own liner notes.
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