THE BEAT GOES ON: David Byrne and Brian Eno

Thirty years ago, David Byrne, then with the Talking Heads, told us that heaven is a place where nothing, nothing ever happens. On his most recent album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, he’s singing a very different tune. This time around, heaven is a place worth fighting for.
 

A lot has gone down through the intervening years, for the fifty-seven-year-old Byrne and for the world at large. And much of the change is reflected in the sound and substance of Everything, which was recorded throughout 2007 and in early 2008, when change was in the air but had yet to be fully realized. First heard upon its release last August, Byrne seemed uncharacteristically optimistic, if not downright sanguine. Heard now, Byrne sounds downright prescient when he sings, “A change is gonna come / Like Sam Cooke sang in sixty-three / The river sings a song to me / On ev’ry St. Cecilia’s day.”
 

Over the course of Everything, a new David Byrne emerges. The former voice of befuddled alienation, of a guy who once puzzled over his place in the greater scheme of things thusly:

 

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, well … how did I get here?

 

has seemingly come to terms with his alienation.

 

Where formerly he looked out upon his surroundings and saw violence in nature (“Animals”) and in urban life (“Life During Wartime”), now Byrne finds beauty in creation along with a newfound generosity of spirit. His bohemian nihilism has been replaced by a feeling of connection with all humanity, as he explores in “Home,” the album’s first track:

 

We’re home, and the band keeps marchin’ on
Connecting to ev’ry living soul
Compassion for things I’ll never know.

 

It comes as no surprise that Byrne arrives at this newly redemptive outlook through the power of music, as reflected in the band that marches on in the above-quoted passage and as fully described in the album’s most celebratory number, “Strange Overtones.” The most Talking Heads-like tune on the CD, a veritable ode to the transcendent power of music, locked into a 1970s Philly soul groove laced with Jerry Harrison-like keyboards, finds Byrne singing in praise of music itself:

 

Your song still needs a chorus
I know you’ll figure it out
The rising of the verses
A change of key will let you out.

 

Most of the songs on Everyday are simple tunes based in gospel and country modes and set inside Brian Eno-constructed, gauzy electronic soundscapes that are churchlike and ethereal. They are hymns, really, and the overall feeling of the album is a liturgy for overcoming twentieth-century cynicism and embracing twenty-first-century utopianism. Byrne makes this abundantly clear on the title track when he sings:

 

From the milk of human kindness
From the breast we all partake
Hungry for a social contract
She welcomes you with dark embrace

 

By the end of the number, Byrne’s vocals are multi-tracked so many times the singer becomes a one-man, full-fledged gospel choir.

 

Much has been written about how the album came to be made: Eno had recorded dozens of instrumental tracks over the last few years that sat languishing in his studio with no artistic purpose or outlet.

 

Byrne caught wind of this, asked to hear them, and the result was that the two musicians—who hadn’t worked together since their last duo album, 1981’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts—commenced a transatlantic collaboration, sending sound files back and forth via e-mail, Byrne in New York City writing lyrics and recording vocals, Eno in England shaping the instrumental settings for what became a seamless merging of the two visionary talents.

 

The resulting album, with its homespun verities and country-folk simplicity, is closer in feeling to the faux-naïf sound of late-period Talking Heads than the heavily Eno-influenced breakthrough albums, Fear of Music and Remain in Light. Only “Poor Boy” boasts the polyrhythmic, avant-funk grooves of those experimental records, whose influence is felt in the work of new groups including Vampire Weekend and LCD Soundsystem.
 

Rather, “Home” paraphrases Paul Simon’s “Homeward Bound,” and aptly so, as a few years ago, Eno produced Surprise, the best Paul Simon album since Graceland. In their country-folk realism, “One Fine Day” and “My Big Nurse” wouldn’t have been out of place musically on the Talking Heads 1985 album Little Creatures or the following year’s True Stories. “I Feel My Stuff” is the only track that strays from the upbeat mood of Everything, with a descending, modal structure featuring dissonant piano, harsh guitar lines, and ominous, wordless backup vocals by Eno.
 

Ultimately what differentiates Everything from what has come before is its prayer-like devotion, its sense of hope, and its belief in the possibility of redemption, musical and otherwise. Coming from the bard of alienation still best known for his novelty hit, “Psycho Killer,” this speaks volumes about a change in David Byrne and, perhaps, a change in all of those who’ve been rocking with him for the past thirty-odd years. (JUNE 2009)

Seth Rogovoy is Berkshire Living’s editor-in-chief and award-winning music critic.

 

THE GOODS

David Byrne and Brian Eno

Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

Todo Mundo/Opal

www.everythingthathappens.com