David Byrne: David Byrne

DAVID BYRNE: DAVID BYRNE (1994)

1) A Long Time Ago; 2) Angels; 3) Crash; 4) A Self-Made Man; 5) Back In The Box; 6) Sad Song; 7) Nothing At All; 8) My Love Is You; 9) Lilies Of The Valley; 10) You & Eye; 11) Strange Ritual; 12) Buck Naked.

General verdict: Meet the new David "Schopenhauer" Byrne, now putting his musical legacy in the service of pessimistic sociology and whatnot.

A self-titled album in the middle of an artistʼs career frequently implies a self-reboot, some sort of impulsive awakening which may or may not work, but at least shows that the artist is trying. In the case of David Byrne, however, it almost looks like this lack of a title was merely meant to agree that the artist no longer has anything particularly interesting to say, period.

This is not a bad record, mind you. It may sound very boring first time around, then it may slowly begin to grow as you realize that it is very deeply personal, and that being subjected to a deeply personal experience experienced by somebody with the talent, intellect, and life story of a David Byrne is, at the very least... useful, if not necessarily enjoyable. But this is what it is: much more of a personal confession in a state of mid-life crisis than a musical piece. Once you come to terms with the fact that almost nothing worthy of serious attention goes on here, musically, it may be easier to accept everything else that is of value. Yet I cannot help feeling a little weird, and sad, when it turns out that even the frickinʼ Tom Tom Club has finally made a jump on David Byrne in terms of musical experimentation and innovation.

I do not really know what was going on in Davidʼs life at the age of 42, but I have recently been through that age myself, and that state of mind is relatable. He is not exploring any issues here that he hadnʼt had at least a small brush with previously, but he is now picking at them with melancholic ferociousness: "I kept my feelings to myself / Until the perfect moment comes", he states on the very first track. I am not sure why that "perfect moment" had to be 1994, a year that, to the best of my memory, was hardly one of those surrender-all-hope years — and this, in fact, might be one of the main reasons why David Byrne disappointed just about everybody and is still rated fairly low on the Byrne-o-meter by critics and fans alike. Ironically, the record just might feel closer to home in 2020; or maybe it is simply my own growing old, because, had I actually heard it fresh from the oven, Iʼd probably dismiss it just as well.

But oh yeah, music comes first. And musically, this is not just a complete departure from the odd Latin-funk-pop synthesis that Byrne curated all through the Eighties; this is actually a mish-mash of styles — Talking Heads styles, solo Byrne styles, other artistsʼ styles — where it is obvious that David tries not to bore you with a monotonous approach, but is also obvious that he is just rewriting old patterns. Many of the songs have evident progenitors. ʽAngelsʼ, for instance, uses a bass pattern very similar to ʽOnce In A Lifetimeʼ. The playful rhythmics and screechy guitar of ʽBack In The Boxʼ take cues from the upbeat material on Little Creatures (hilariously, though, I just realized that the main melody may very well have been subconsciously influenced by Genesisʼ ʽI Canʼt Danceʼ!). The long atmospheric start to ʽStrange Ritualʼ, with its delayed guitars running ghostly circles around your ears, is something directly out of Brian Enoʼs textbook — think one of those instrumentals on Another Green World. And so on.

No wonder, then, that if you approach the album from a position of musical experience, the songs will not look like much of anything. Worse, even a dude with razor-sharp wit and God-given inspiration might eventually cease to be interesting if he just keeps making the same artistic points over and over again — and I cannot promise that this album will let you know anything about Byrne, the thinking personʼs artist, that you, the thinking person (you are a thinking person, right?), have not already known or at least suspected before. But if you want yourself just a few nifty nuances, and if you want to hear a David Byrne who is a little unusually more quiet and contemplative than ever before, the record is worth your while.

The album lives under the shadow of ʽA Long Time Agoʼ, a sort of jazzy meditation with astral overtones — lots of tricky guitar lines overloaded with echo effects, against the background of which the voice of David slowly drifts in space. Curiously, it shares stylistic similarities with Bends- and OK Computer-era Radiohead, though the instrumental arrangements are nowhere near as attention-attracting; the overall message is much the same, though — a sad farewell to the old world and a bit of discomfort and trepidation at the coming of a new one. Listen hard enough and it is difficult not to feel pity at the songʼs conclusion — "itʼs only the singing of the stars, they burned out a long, long time ago...". This is genuinely the saddest and gloomiest that Byrne ever got, which is not really a compliment — so far, the guy has always worked best when he was hiding his depression under a spastic coat of irony and eccentricity, and while taking off oneʼs mask is always an act of bravery, the end result always has a 50/50 chance of amazing people or severely disappointing them. In this case, the typical reaction might be relative indifference: we know, really, that melancholic nostalgia and fear of the future have been two of Byrneʼs primary building blocks for the previous ten years, so this «coming out» with an explicit confession is, if not totally predictable, at least somewhat to be expected.

Later on, we learn that "there are no angels left in America anymore", which does not exactly set your mind reeling as strongly as it did when the same song was ʽOnce In A Lifetimeʼ. We get a ʽHeavenʼ-type acoustic ballad where we learn that "weʼre living in a dump, trying to figure out what sex we are" (no, this is not about transgender issues). We get that odd ʽI Canʼt Danceʼ clone in which we learn that "the sun shines on the evil, the sun shines on the good, it doesnʼt favour righteousness, although you wish it would" and that the protagonist is "going back in the box again", though, honestly, heʼd never left it in the first place. We have ʽNothing At Allʼ, a song that begins with the same gloomy bass swoop as Aimee Mannʼs ʽSave Meʼ would a few years later — totally not a coincidence, because both artistsʼ aesthetics are dangerously close at this time. We do get a thin thread of romance and sentimentalism, too, like in the short acoustic ballad ʽMy Love Is Youʼ which sounds exactly like a Ray Davies trying his hand at bossa nova — but we do get the message that this cuddly sentimentalism is just one way of alleviating the heroʼs pains and shutting him off from the outside world.

What we also get, unfortunately, is a sort of half-assed attitude when it comes to developing and realizing all these ideas. In a recent appreciation of the late David Bermanʼs Purple Mountains, I was struck by how it was possible to express such a decided and resolute state of self-ejection from the world through such friendly and worldly musical means, making you deeply respectful and genuinely terrified of the artist at once. This album, on the contrary, is not resolute at all — it meanders, it hobbles around from one shred of musical depression to another, and even though, fortunately enough, it is not at all self-pitying, it... well, letʼs just say it sprays its message all around you in faint whiffs of aerosol, rather than sending it flying like a bullet in your skull. Itʼs not that Byrneʼs musical muscles have become flabby; it is rather that he has consciously allowed them to atrophy without thinking of a way to make the best use of it. Of course, with anybody less talented than Byrne this entire «more existentialist philosophy, less musical invention» strategy would be aural and intellectual torture. With Byrne, it is more like «hmm, nice change of direction, David, but did you really have to let your hair grow that long to do it?»