It Will All Make Sense

David Byrne is a one-man creative juggernaut. At various times a musician, an artist, a photographer and a record label owner, he has his finger on the pulse of contemporary artistic expression in its many guises. Befitting his early art-school days at the Rhode Island School of Design, he has created visual art exhibits, films, books and even a paean to PowerPoint. He’s an advocate of biking who’s often seen riding around his neighborhood; in fact, one of his recent art projects was the design of several sculptural bike racks around New York. (He even rides his foldable bicycle while on tour.) And last summer, he turned an empty warehouse on the New York waterfront into an architectural musical instrument by using an old pump organ to control electric motors and pulleys that created sound by striking or vibrating metal components in the building. The guy who began as the nerdy, twitchy techno-geek frontman of the Talking Heads back in the ’70s and ’80s is now more known for his spiky shock of silver-white Einstein hair than for his herky-jerky mannerisms.

He still, though, writes, sings, produces and plays intelligent, accessible music that makes people want to dance.

Byrne reunited with Brian Eno, the London-based world-music and ambient-sound aficionado who produced several of the Talking Heads’ albums, for his newest recording, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. It’s not a sequel to the pair’s 1981 collaboration, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, although a 2006 remastering and reissue of that album is what initially brought the friends together again. Eno had some music lying around that had never been formed into songs; Byrne was open to working up some lyrics and melodies from Eno’s musical ideas. They traded e-mails as the songs emerged.

In a CBC interview in November, as the CD was being released, Byrne said that he and Eno didn’t commit to completing the project for some time: “We don’t tell people we’re making a record; we don’t even tell ourselves we’re making a record. We just try a song or two and see what happens.”

Byrne calls the newest pieces “gospel-folk-electronic,” although many are more percussion-heavy than that mixed label might imply. And the “gospel” is more stylistic than religious, although to use Byrne’s own words, the songs are “uplifting (in an un-corny way).” Indeed, lyrics that would feel sentimental in the hands of another artist work well here. Byrne’s political and social commentary is sometimes overt, sometimes subtle, but there’s hope and humor amid the despair — along with a good beat.

On the current tour (currently in Australia, then headed to Canada and Europe after two brief U.S. stops: Seattle and here), Byrne performs with a full band plus backup singers and a team of dancers, delivering a concert experience that’s interesting visually as well as musically. The playlist merges the new with Byrne’s extensive back catalog from the Talking Heads and his own 20-year solo career.

If there’s one consistent thread running through all of Byrne’s artistic output, since the earliest days of the Talking Heads, it’s his nonconformist view of the absurdity of mainstream middle-class American culture — especially corporate-sponsored pop culture. That’s what separated bands like the Talking Heads (and the Ramones and others on the slightly less angry end of the punk continuum) from the over-produced commercially successful bands of the mid-’70s. And yet, despite the cultural critique at the heart of many of his songs, along with his strongly anti-advertising visual art projects, Byrne’s work is always both fun and smart, while retaining an off-kilter edge. (A New York Times writer two years ago wrote that Byrne “balanced playfulness and erudition with a dollop of disorientation.”) It’s as if the class geek became the most popular and interesting guy around while retaining his geek cred.

In the CBC interview, Byrne said that the breadth of his artistic expression isn’t part of some grand scheme. “It’s not by plan or by design,” he said. “One thing leads to another, and instead of saying, ‘No, I can’t do that,’ it’s kind of like, ‘Sure, why not?’”

So there’s no predicting what’s next for David Byrne. More music, certainly; more visual arts projects, for sure. More bike racks? More architectural instruments? Something even more bizarre and fun? You never know.

“I’m sure there will be something I’ll just stumble into,” he said in November, “where an opportunity will present itself, and I’ll say, ‘Yes. That’s what I should be doing.’”

And somehow, it will all make sense.

“Everything David Byrne” will happen on Thursday, Feb. 19, at 7:30 pm at the Fox, 1001 W. Sprague. Tickets: $35-$62. Visit ticketswest.com or foxtheaterspokane.com, or call 325-SEAT or 624-1200.