A clear descendant of Talking Heads’ 1980 masterpiece “Remain in Light,” the song sees Byrne once again taking stock of his life as though witnessing it from a passive remove, but here the outlook has changed. Penultimate track “Everybody’s Coming to My House” captures perhaps the essence of his music - it’s an instantly infectious, insistently rhythmic song that nonetheless has enough of an edge to make you hesitate to actually dance to it. In contrast, “This Is That,” one of several collaborations with enigmatic composer Oneohtrix Point Never, is a treasure trove of sonic pleasures geared for close headphone listening, but the bones of the song beneath them never quite seem to connect.īut when Byrne’s themes and his compositions cohere, the results are wonderful to behold. “It’s Not Dark Up Here” starts promisingly but doesn’t add flesh to its loose framework. (“The brain is a soft-boiled potato” “the pope don’t mean s–t to a dog.”) There’s still plenty of room for darkness - the downtempo “Bullet” offers a stark, anatomical description of a bullet passing through a human body, and stands as perhaps the most politically relevant song on the record - but there’s enough hope and joy here to take Byrne at his word that the phrase “American Utopia” should be read without irony.Īt times, particularly during the more meditative middle stretch, the album can be easier to admire than to love.
#AMERICAN UTOPIA SOUNDTRACK FULL#
“Dog’s Mind” imagines a presidential inauguration as seen from a canine perspective, while “Every Day Is a Miracle” is full of oddball bons mots.
Rather than dwell on the horrors of the Trump era, he opts to take a more expansive view, frequently reaching for gardening metaphors and snatches of Seussian metaphysics.
Yet the focus throughout is squarely on Byrne’s inimitable croon - at 65, his voice is remarkably pristine - and his often defiantly optimistic lyrics.
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