“At my age, at least for me, there’s a ‘don’t give a s*** about what people think’ attitude that kicks in,” Byrne said of creating the new album.
“I can step outside my comfort zone with the knowledge that I kind of know who I am by now and sort of know what I’m doing. That said, every new set of songs, every song even, is a new adventure.”
The Road To Nowhere singer last brought his record and boundary-breaking American Utopia tour to Spark Arena seven years ago and has since gone on to perform it on Broadway, as well as regrouping with Talking Heads for the promotion of the re-release of their smash hit concert film Stop Making Sense.
A recent cover version album called Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense, features Kiwi singer Lorde.
Herald reviewer Karl Puschmann said Byrne’s 2018 Auckland gig included a “big band, big energy, and big songs”, and featured a solid selection of material from American Utopia and Byrne’s Talking Heads hits such as Burning Down The House and Slippery People.
“Band members regularly appeared and disappeared from the stage, there was choreographed routines and synchronised dancing, there was David Byrne holding a brain in one hand and detailing what the different parts of it did with the other,” Puschmann wrote.
Byrne also expressed admiration for New Zealand’s cycling trails, telling the audience he had the chance to get out on a bike while he was here.
The singer recently went viral after performing Burning Down The House with pop star Olivia Rodrigo at the Governors Ball Music Festival in New York.
Born in Scotland, Byrne moved to America at a young age before studying at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, where he met fellow Talking Heads bandmates Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz.
Tickets for Byrne’s Who Is The Sky? tour go on sale Friday, June 13, at 1pm local time via Ticketmaster. Frontier Touring members can access a 22-hour presale from Thursday, June 12, at 2pm via frontiertouring.com/davidbyrne.
Mitchell Hageman joined the Herald’s entertainment and lifestyle team in 2024. He previously worked as a multimedia journalist for Hawke’s Bay Today.
