David Byrne – The Avant Garde Review

What may sound like a mockery of Avant Garde on The Avant Garde is, really, a beautiful tribute to it. David Byrne has a charm in his solo work which contrasts with the madness and experimental flavour of Talking Heads. He is still a counterculture figurehead, but the blur between mass appeal and efforts made to defy popular music is larger. Byrne still has what it takes to deliver a sharp pop track. His cover of Hard Times by Paramore proves as much, but there is a deeper value tugging at his heart. You can hear that come into play on The Avant Garde. We do not regard Byrne as an artist capable of sarcasm or satire because much of his career following the demise of Talking Heads has been dedicated to sincere forms of genre experimentation. His Reasons to be Cheerful website only adds to this desire to be connected to truth and beauty across the world heard on Who is the Sky?.  

The Avant Garde is a new direction. Not just for Byrne but for his upcoming album. It’s a stark contrast to the lighter tones heard on his singles so far. They were, to be blunt, poor. Phone screen fears and an underwhelming sense of having the world explained across Everybody Laughs and She Explains Things to Me are dropped. In the lighter place is, ironically, a slice of avant-garde creativity. It’s a striking change-up and an unexpected one. The Avant Garde features Byrne detail his thoughts, or rather reflecting the average listener’s thoughts, on the experimental momentum carried in counterculture. He is no longer part of counterculture by way of popularity, but can still perform with avant-garde intent. From the chilling instrumental work, which features a gut-wrenching guitar halfway through, to the speculation of what we can feasibly get from other walks of music, The Avant Garde is both playful and striking.  

Byrne has blurred those forms before, but The Avant Garde feels like the first time he has ever gotten the balance right. His stripped-back instrumentals are gone here. In its place comes a suggestive cruelty to those wanting to tackle what they believe is the mountain of new ideas. It’s a borderline nursery rhyme-like adaptation of what the avant-garde is. That creeping, plodding sound would feature in a hokey detective film while the investigator climbs the stairs. But Byrne is about challenging the perception of sounds. Byrne has written about as much in How Music Works. Deception and being ahead of the curve are what define avant-garde creativity. Success means nothing to it, nor does meaning in some cases. Byrne brings all this to life on a song which feels rigidly close to pop structure.  

But such is the point. We can enjoy avant-garde material when it breaches the pop structure, and likewise, when popular terms affect the counterculture, we can adapt. Byrne has adapted best of all. Perhaps not as successfully as others, but he has kept a spark of the new and interesting alive in works which line up with popular entertainers like Lorde and St. Vincent. They, too, have managed that fine blur, and it is perhaps a reason why Byrne has collaborated with them, be it in the studio or interviews. Walking the line of Avant Garde and popular culture is what listeners and artists must now do, and the call to do so comes on The Avant Garde. It’s a nice touch from Byrne, a song which showcases the sincerity which so often features in his music, abstract or not.