David Byrne review: Heaven is a place on Earth for thrilling gig at 3Arena, Dublin 

 David Byrne gave us a mesmerising performance in Dublin and a set peppered with Talking Heads' classics, writes Tom Dunne

A recent image of David Byrne, who performed at 3Arena in Dublin on Friday. (Photo by Dave Simpson/WireImage)

David Byrne, 3Arena, Dublin ★★★★★

Just after 8pm David Byrne strides onto the stage in Dublin. He launches into a stripped back Heaven from Talking Heads’ 1979 album Fear of Music. It is an apt start; for the next two hours Heaven is a place on earth, 3Arena to be precise, and Byrne is godlike at its absolute centre.

In preparation for this show I listened to 1980’s Remain in Light on vinyl for five nights straight.  I got the bus into town to buy that on its release. Same bus I got in to see Jonathan Demme's 1984 film Stop Making Sense. A lot has changed since then, but not David Byrne.

He looks magnificent. If that is a version of what being 73 can look like, then where do I sign up? What have I to do? He is dancing, performing, talking and singing for almost two hours. When he pretends to fall no one thinks “He can’t get up”. Some of the dancers break sweat. Byrne doesn’t.

The show, to put it mildly, is not your normal rock show. The musicians have been untethered. There are no microphone stands, no leads, no amps, no drum kits. With radio packs, they carry what they need to play, enabling them to dance, sing and play with abandon.

It is highly choreographed. The ensemble, moving too fast for a dancing man (me) to count. I’d guess 14 in total, circle Byrne at all times, flowing around him like a dancing musical sea. It is mesmerising, fluid, exciting. It is theatre, and yet, it is rock and roll.

At its heart of course, lies David Byrne and his vast musical repertoire. At the start he interweaves the hits, I would say sensibly, ( And She Was, This Must Be the Place) with songs some might not know ( Strange Overtones and the new single, T Shirt, co-produced by Brian Eno).

I have to say, you should know these songs, because creatively Byrne appears to have neither let up nor peaked. This is particularly obvious when he hits the section featuring songs from recent album, Who is the Sky, for me a Top 10 favourite of last year.

He takes more time introducing these, sharing with us – on huge wraparound screen which is itself a star of the show- photos of his, ahem, $17 million NYC apartment. He tells us how he spent covid. He is warm, witty and generous to a fault. And these songs, like I Met The Buddha at a Downtown Party, are just joyous.

The home strait starts with Psycho Killer, as jaw dropping now as it was in 1977. There are too many highlights, but Life During Wartime, Once in a Lifetime and Everybody’s Coming to My House, are epic.

I was reminded, watching it all, of a Talking Heads badge I once had that said; “I Am Not of this World. I am a White Light from God.” In that regard, on this evidence, it remains the same as it ever was.