David Byrne: Grown Backwards

DAVID BYRNE: GROWN BACKWARDS (2004)

1) Glass, Concrete & Stone; 2) The Man Who Loved Beer; 3) Au Fond Du Temple Saint; 4) Empire; 5) Tiny Apocalypse; 6) She Only Sleeps; 7) Dialog Box; 8) The Other Side Of This Life; 9) Why; 10) Pirates; 11) Civilization; 12) Astronaut; 13) Glad; 14) Un Di Felice, Eterea.

General verdict: Tasteful, soothing, intelligent, ironic, catchy, and just a wee bit cleansed of excitement that one is expected to crave when dealing with the art of a Talking Head. Even a former Talking Head.

As Davidʼs preoccupation with the worlds of neoclassical music, Broadway and off-Broadway shows, and electronic artists gradually overcame his passion for straightahead rock and pop, something like Grown Backwards was bound to happen sooner or later — a record where the funky groove, hitherto the backbone of all things related to Talking Heads and Byrneʼs own solo career, is unceremoniously dumped and trodden over in favor of a little jazz, a little bossa nova, a lot of chamber music, and even a healthy selection of... opera.

Yes, this is where you will find David trying his trachea at not one, but two famous opera arias: ʽAu Fond Du Temple Saintʼ from Bizetʼs Les Pêcheurs De Perles (with Rufus Wainwright as second vocalist) and ʽUn Di Feliceʼ from La Traviata. I cannot even say that he does a poor job with them, unless we automatically consider every non-opera-trained singerʼs delivery of an opera aria a poor job by definition. But the only serious reason that I can see for doing this is that David must have been on a solid opera kick at the time, and thought that by putting these pieces on his next album he might introduce a bunch of veteran fans to the wonders of 19th century opera. Also, both arias (technically, duets, but David only picks the male parts, for which we thank him) deal with the mystical nature of amorous trance, so perhaps this is really all just a sly throwback to those early days when a very young David Byrne sang about "Believe, believe in mystery / Love is simple as one, two, three", and now, as he is growing backwards, he wants us to be reminded that certain lyrical heroes of days long gone by used to sing about the exact same things in significantly different manners, but with the exact same message.

Do relax though, because this new hobby does not take up all of Davidʼs time, and most of the other tracks are quite honestly and diligently self-written, with the exception of ʽThe Man Who Loved Beerʼ, a nice old chamber-country ditty from Lambchop, set to the reworked lyrics of a classic Old Egyptian poem that is 100% right up Davidʼs alley — "to whom can I speak today? the gentleness has perished and the violent man has come down on everyone". It is a lovely vocal melody, curled around a lovely strings-and-synths arrangement, but I must say that I do know the original and this reworking is not that much of an improvement or even of a reinvention — on the other hand, I rarely have a problem with David singing about the atrocities of life in lovable vocal overtones across lovable musical backgrounds.

The problem is that he does it a lot on this album, and there is too little roughness in between all the crooning to prevent it from gluing together. ʽEmpireʼ is sweet and smoothly majestic, setting grim lyrical irony ("whatʼs good for business is good for us all") against horn-driven music that vaguely recalls old-school art-pop; ʽThe Other Side Of This Lifeʼ is a Randy Newman-esque pop waltz, specially tailored to raise empathy for the lyrical hero; ʽPiratesʼ is... gentle zydeco meets corny vaudeville? whatever; ʽAstronautʼ, with its slide guitars and honey-sweet lullaby vocals is as peaceful and soporific as an early Eightiesʼ George Harrison ballad — I mean, all of these songs are good, without exception, but it is not very interesting to write or talk about them, because they tell us nothing new about Byrneʼs artistry, and, perhaps more importantly, they never cut too deep, what with David becoming more and more of a courteous gentleman with age instead of that young and lovable quasi-autistic son of a bitch who could twist knives within societyʼs ulcers rather than just gently ironize over them.

In the end, I believe that my favorite piece on here is the bonus track — a grotesquely huge orchestrated re-recording of the song ʽLazyʼ, originally issued by the British house project X-Press 2 with Byrne on vocals. The original was largely notable for its funny video of a lazy guy on the sofa which seemed to be taken right out of the True Stories format; this reworking is one that I find much more musically interesting, with a mixed techno-disco arrangement and a mish-mash of strings and electronics that actually brings back the required groove while at the same time being psychedelic and generally fun. Had this kind of style actually been realized more often on the album itself, Iʼd be a bigger fan; instead, the few times when the music is danceable just take us back to Davidʼs well-explored love of Latin rhythms.