I’ve always preferred David Byrne’s work with Talking Heads to his solo stuff, so I was probably already predisposed to be left cold by American Utopia. However, when I saw him perform excerpts from this on Saturday Night Live, I was intrigued enough to check out the complete performance on HBO Max. As it turns out, it’s basically the equivalent of a listening to an entire album that only has a handful of good songs.
The concept of the show isn’t particularly novel as it is more or less a rehash of Stop Making Sense. It begins with Byrne alone on stage and before long he is eventually joined by more and more (too many, in fact) musicians and dancers as the night progresses. The choreography for each number becomes increasingly chaotic as the performers move around the stage like a high school drumline on ecstasy.
The big problem is that many of the songs find Byrne wallowing in a lot of world music-infused numbers that just drone on and on. The film also stops cold at a few junctures for heavy handed sermonizing (no surprise as it was directed by Spike Lee) which immediately deflate whatever momentum it had started to build up. When Byrne plays the hits (you know, the Talking Heads stuff), the film comes to life. It’s like a switch goes on and it becomes an entirely different movie. (“Road to Nowhere” and “Burning Down the House” are the obvious highlights.) Once he goes back to his incessant caterwauling, it lost me.
There’s even a scene where Byrne hoots and wails in tribute to Dadaism. He informs us the Dada movement was about making nonsense as a way to help us make sense of our lives. If you ask me, Byrne should start making sense.
AKA: American Utopia.
AbsoFRAGG'nlutely agree! B-O-R-I-N-G... Love the Talking Heads with David's wailing sing-songy voice a nice compliment to the MUCH better rhythm and background of the groups' excellent Neo-Funky style (Let me put it this way... which would you rather listen to, the sharp, Funky enervating sounds of Tina Weymouth & husband's very catchy Tom Tom Club, the intriguing, well composed songs of Jerry Harrison, or the monotonous droning and mind-numbingly directionless David Byrne...? BTW, in my lowly and wretched opinion of someone who has collected vinyl for over 40 years, the two albums that David Byrne (and/or Talking Heads) and Brian Eno did together Remain in Light and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (the infinitely superiour Pt.1) are to me probably 2 of the greatest albums of the last 50 years. But, David by himself... Not so much...
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