Get a bunch of musicians and dancers, dress them in orange, clear the stage of any leads or amps, carefully choreograph every number, and make the best use of lighting and video; welcome to David Byrne’s remarkable Who Is The Sky tour.
By Miles Salter
Technically, this gig is a marvel. The stage is bare – there’s not a guitar lead, amp, or drum riser in sight. The percussionists (who play together brilliantly) use instruments which are harnessed to their bodies. This allows the show to have a freewheeling, untethered freedom. But not that freewheeling. Everyone is dressed from head to toe in orange, and the uniform movements sometimes feel like reminders of the Oompa Loompas in the rewired Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.
For autistic Byrne, repetition and uniformity may be a buzz. ‘Everybody should follow the arrows,’ he told an interviewer about bicycle lanes in New York, where he likes to cycle. His vision is unusual; when he appeared on Desert Island Discs, one of the tracks he chose was Tom Ze’s Toc, which employed power tools to make music.
He brought a similarly idiosyncratic approach to Talking Heads. Stop Making Sense, the acclaimed concert film from 1984, used inventive staging, outsized suits, and rehearsed movement to create something unique.
The same choreography is employed in Manchester. This is a show that is very carefully mapped out; nothing is left to chance. Two weeks of rehearsal in New York in September meant the band and dancers were carefully drilled. It makes for brilliant spectacle but are the ensemble enjoying it? It’s highly disciplined stuff, a military version of music.
Byrne dominated the sound and vision of Talking Heads. The band were hugely successful throughout the ‘80s, even while a younger, more intense Byrne behaved wilfully towards his bandmates. They’ve never really made up. In his book about Talking Heads, drummer Chris Frantz was open about the tensions.
Driven but sometimes aloof, Byrne seemed unwilling, in the final analysis, to be a team player, and left the band in 1991. ‘It’s impossible to recapture where you were in your life, musically,’ Byrne has said. In the years since, he’s made eight solo albums and been involved in numerous soundtrack and collaborative projects.
This show is a team affair, even if it is dominated by Byrne’s vision. Including musicians, dancers, animators, and technical crew, 60 people have been involved in bringing it to life. He allows band members their moment in the spotlight.
The gig is peppered with observations about the world, from images of the Buddha to pondering the inner life of animals. We’re shown an image of Byrne’s (very desirable) New York apartment, where he lived alone during Covid lockdown in 2020. He tells us he spent a lot of time watching nature documentaries and was bemused by a fight at a grocery store where a woman lobbed potatoes.
He’s a wry observer, still fascinated by the world. At one point he puts up images from his day in Manchester. He’s still interested in the world, intrigued by it, and cycles around New York.
Elsewhere, visual tricks provide humour and menace. A shadow matches Byrne’s at the start of Psycho Killer, before becoming independent and huge.
The show is chock full of energy. The audience can’t help dancing to the music. The big numbers are the hits from Talking Heads’ glory years: Heaven, And She Was, Psycho Killer, Once In A Lifetime, punctuated by songs from Byrne’s solo oeuvre.
Although it’s subtle, there are hints towards the end of a troubled world. As part of the performance of Life During Wartime, video is shown of Trump’s ICE warriors in battles with ordinary Americans. The applause is rapturous. Burning Down The House, which ends the show, has a smouldering orange backdrop – surely a reference to global warming and the recent increase in wildfires.
This was a brilliant, compelling show. Byrne may not have been an easy bandmate in the past, but his wild inventiveness is extraordinary. ‘This show will restore your faith in humanity,’ said The Guardian review. As Israel and USA busy themselves with terrible destruction in Iran, I might change ‘humanity’ to ‘creativity,’ but the summary is about right.
David Byrne performed at Manchester’s O2 Apollo on Tuesday 10 March 2026.
Miles Salter is writer and musician based in York. His band is Miles and The Chain Gang. He writes regularly for York Calling.
