It wasn’t a big suit like in the heyday of Talking Heads that David Byrne wore Thursday night, but a fuzzy, vividly pink one. It was just as boxy, though, its shoulders square and buttoned down. And the ticks and shivers– as if he were about to slide into an epileptic or psychotic fit– those are signatures now.
Kicking in with “Once in a Lifetime” (a yuppie existential anthem if ever there was one), Byrne put on a heckuva cardiovascular workout at the Riviera, in the public concert of a two-night gig sponsored by WXRT-FM. Wednesday’s show at the Park West was private.
Throughout the cavalcade of sound — alternating between deliciously feverish rhythms and more ethereal, sometimes eerie numbers — Byrne jerked and twitched about the stage, as if in a parody of a white guy who can’t dance. Except, of course, that Byrne hits the beat each time, whether with a little hip spasm or the aerobic running in place that accompanied “Road to Nowhere.”
Working a spare stage with a singular black screen in the middle, Byrne changed costumes throughout, doffing the fuzzy pink suit for an Irish kilt at one point, and later for a body suit that showed off the human musculature system like a biology book transparency come to life.
The costume changes, though, seemed as deep as Cher’s, and that’s okay: The solo Byrne has shed a lot of the smugness and irony that followed him around during the Talking Heads moment in the sun in the 1980s. He’s also far more relaxed and energized these days than when he first went on his own and tried to bring his more intimate material to the concert stage. Maybe it’s being the father of a seven-year-old that has given Byrne, 45, a new, unapologetic sense of nonsense. Whatever the reason, he was actually grinning during a good hunk of the show.
Backed by a four-piece band that included a mostly electronic percussion setup, bass, keyboards and steel guitar, Byrne rang up the Talking Heads’ jukebox with songs like “Take Me to the River” and “Psycho Killer,” but didn’t neglect his own solo work. From his recently released “Feeling,” Byrne trotted out “Gates of Paradise” and a frenzied, burning “Daddy Go Down.”
