David Byrne Concert Review: A Multicoloured Ride of Joy, Love and Kindness

David Byrne’s Who is the Sky tour has come to Brisbane. This is the tour supporting Byrne’s latest solo record Who is the Sky, which had its lead single on the top 50 of 2025 and is getting a good critical response. This is the first time Byrne has toured Australia since 2018 and the tour itself was getting rave reviews in NZ, so my expectations were high…and were ultimately exceeded. The show itself has a lot going on, so we will break this review down into a discussion about the stage and show itself, highlights and an overall summary.

Byrne’s show was part concert and part performance art, which follows how David has viewed live music in the past. His shows usually involve some visual motifs and an overall theme. First of all, Byrne was with a 12-15 piece band all wearing total orange…even orange shoes…and carrying mobile instruments. That’s right, there were no stationary instruments on the stage and everyone played and danced throughout the space with some fun choreography. This gave the show an inviting kinetic energy during big numbers, while also creating emotional intimacy during more stripped back tracks as 3 or 4 musicians huddled around Byrne. Having 100% mobile instruments and everyone wearing the same bright orange was brilliant and gave the show a life of its own.

Moreover, the entire stage was a huge LED screen with large LED screens flanking the band. This allowed for projections on the floor and the walls. The band could go from walking on the moon, having their names projected and following them on stage and having them totally engulfed in orange, blue and red to dramatic effect. The juxtaposition of the bright orange with whatever was projected on the screens gave the show an epic dramatic and theatrical weight. I have never seen something like that and it shows how Byrne continues to push art in both music and performance.

Also, never forget that David Byrne is 73. That’s right….73. Even though he was not as bouncy as he was in Stop Making Sense, he was running around the stage, bouncing around and dancing the night away. Most importantly, his vocal kept its depth and power from the Talking Heads days. You could close your eyes during some tracks and you felt like you were back in the late 70s/early 80s. There was great banter with the crowd as he projected pictures of the places he went since he has been in Brisbane and even gave the pre-concert fire exit speech off stage. As he said “Please leave the aisles clear when dancing. Because in case of fire, people dancing in the aisles will have an unfair advantage over everyone else.” He was amazing and his charisma on stage really held the audience.

Now, let’s get to the highlights. There are too many to really get into each one. I’ll let you know the Talking Heads tracks and then focus on some favs of mine. We heard Heaven, Psycho Killer, And She Was, Houses in Motion, (Nothing But) Flowers, This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody), Slippery People, Life During Wartime, Once in a Lifetime and of course…Burning Down the House as the encore. As you can see, there is a lot of Stop Making Sense in this show, which I loved. He didn’t just throw the crowd a bone here and there, but played all the hits and a few well selected deep cuts.

We started with Heaven as Byrne sang the song huddled with two string players and guitar. This intimate and powerful version of Heaven was a big emotional punch at the beginning of the show and let you know that you were in for something special. Both Psycho Killer and Life During Wartime had slight remixes in order to accomodate the large mobile band, which gave them a new freshness I enjoyed. You got to sing along with your favourite Talking Heads tracks, but experienced them in a new way. A great deep cut was (Nothing But) Flowers off of Naked. There was tons of energy as the band danced around the stage in front of images of nature and empty stores. By this time in the show 80% of the crowd were up and dancing…but what got everyone up was the final encore track Burning Down the House. Byrne belted this out like his life depended on it as the entire band was bathed in bright red light. The drama was off the chart and the audience lost their minds in this napalm bomb of a closing track.

The entire show ran for a tick under 2 hours, so there was a lot of space for his solo work and an interesting cover. The highlight solo track was Everybody Laughs, which is the lead single off of the new record. There was a ton of energy with this track and it was the first track that included the entire band. The stage pulsated with people dancing and marching with their instruments. This is my favourite track on the record and it translated well live. Much like in Stop Making Sense were the band covered Al Green’s Take me to the River, Byrne performed a cover in this set. He covered Paramore’s hit Hard Times with more of a funky jazz vibe, which gave the track more of a grounded feeling. This cover was not totally out of the blue. Paramore did an excellent cover of Burning Down the House on a Talking Heads tribute record, Hayley Williams features on Byrne’s new record and Byrne himself released a single of the Hard Times cover in 2024…so it makes sense to put it in his set. Byrne has an extensive solo career that dates back to 1981, so he had a lot to pick from. One standout from a previous record was Like Humans Do, which got everyone moving on a hook full of strings and snapping percussion.

Seeing David Byrne bring everything he had to the show was a biblical experience. Moreover, his gratitude towards the fans was palpable in how he thanked everyone and played his Talking Heads hits with as much fire and joy as he did in the 80s. Some artists would see themselves as over “playing the hits” and may throw the audience a bone with some half-assed rendition of a previous hit, but Byrne really gave it everything and exuded joy with every note. Much like seeing Paul McCartney, it was amazing to experience these tracks live from an icon of music. Above all else, the show itself exuded joy, love and kindness…like Byrne said during the show “Showing love and kindness is the new punk. Loving each other and kindness is the new resistance.” This show will stay with me forever and is right up their with Paul and Patti Smith as one of the best shows I have ever seen.