David Byrne, ‘Who Is the Sky?’: Album Review

When David Byrne last released an album, Donald Trump was president, and the world was still two years away from the COVID-19 pandemic. Byrne delivered 2018’s American Utopia, an album of hope and positivity, amid the turmoil caused by Trump’s presidency, setting aside his cynicism to spread encouragement at a time when optimism was in short supply.

By the time Byrne’s hit Broadway show based on American Utopia premiered as a film directed by Spike Lee in September 2020 — with the world in lockdown and less than two months before Trump was voted out of office — the timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous. Five years later, Trump has returned to office, and the hope that seemed possible then has been suppressed by a flurry of new, even more hostile policies.

So it’s unsurprising that Byrne’s ninth solo album, Who Is the Sky?, picks up where American Utopia left off. That record, his first solo LP in 14 years, gave him his biggest multimedia hit since Talking Heads were still a band; more importantly, faith that good can overcome evil is needed now more than ever. Byrne drives home that message throughout Who Is the Sky?‘s 12 songs.

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For the man who wrote and sang “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me” about Middle America in 1978’s “The Big Country,” it’s disarming at times to hear Byrne disclose such sincere empathy in lines like “Everybody’s going through the changes” here. Recorded with New York ensemble Ghost Train Orchestra, known for their melding of classical, jazz and avant-garde, Who Is the Sky? sounds more fully formed than much of Byrne’s past solo work. Not since 1997’s Feelings has he covered so much musical ground on a record.

Whether collaborating with St. Vincent or Paramore’s Hayley Williams, or employing the Smile drummer Tom Skinner to play a West African djembe, Byrne finds joyous freedom in “Everybody Laughs,” “My Apartment Is My Friend” and “What Is the Reason for It?” Musically, he jumps from skittering world pop to existential strings-adorned ballads; there’s rarely connective tissue between the songs. It can make Who Is the Sky? unfocused, even as Byrne espouses universal happiness and acceptance, the driving point anyway. “All of this suffering is just a temporary thing,” he sings in “I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party,” spreading hope to a world in desperate need of it.