*** 1/2 / DAVID BYRNE
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“David Byrne”
Luaka Bop/Sire
Byrne’s third solo album climaxes with a track called “Buck Naked,” and the booklet features clinical close-ups of our boy in the buff. Byrne has a curious knack for exploring the split between biology and spirituality, how we do or don’t feel comfortable in our own skins, how we define who we are: “I can barely touch my own self / How could I touch someone else? / I am just an advertisement for a version of myself,” he confesses in “Angels.”
Byrne suggests this is his most personal undertaking. It’s certainly his most mature, even if many songs lack cohesion: His classic compulsions are here, but combined with a bigger picture, a wonderment about life (and death) expressed in beautiful imagery that is alternately mundane and mysterious.
The sound marks an intriguing return to a stripped-down band, focused on guitar and without the salsa horns, yet full of tricky funk and subtle world-beat flavorings. Even in nakedness, there’s nothing terribly simple about Byrne or his sound.
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