AS A PERFORMER AND ARTIST WHO HAS NEVER BEEN RESTRICTED TO OR DEFINED BY MUSIC ALONE, BYRNE CUTS LOOSE WITH SOMETHING FAR MORE THEATRICAL h3@BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY HALL

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17 JUN

All the superlatives you’ve heard or read about David Byrne’s American Utopia Tour are true. Aesthetically impeccable, it is probably the most astonishing live production of the new millennium, a visual and sonic banquet, part post-modernist Vaudeville, part barking mad revivalist meeting, replete with clever choreography, virtuoso musicianship and, of course, great songs that, in this context, engender an overwhelming sensory experience. Rarely has this writer encountered such palpable excitement before a gig, the Symphony Hall rippling with an expectancy that was more than fulfilled. Byrne emerged from the darkness to seat himself at a desk, holding aloft a replica of the human brain. Like a mad professor, he launched into Here, a sort of lesson in neuroscience, while behind him a curtain of gold beads rose from the stage to the rafters, like a waterfall flowing upwards.