What is ‘The Avant Garde’ to David Byrne?
Nobody has managed to balance the clashing forces of avant-garde exploration and pop accessibility with such eccentric panache as former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne.
Hailing from New York’s famed CBGB scene, by the end of the 1970s, Byrne fronted a nervy and wiry post-punk outfit armed with killer yet idiosyncratic hooks, commercially miles behind fellow East Village new wave dwellers Blondie. Expanding their sonic palette, Talking Heads would strike a course through eerie polyrhythmic expanses, mutoid Afrobeat, and shimmering art pop that showered the band with global chart success and their standing as one of the defining acts of the 1980s.
Byrne has always been armed with a healthy and slightly irreverent relationship with the avant-garde. Talking Heads and his solo work are powered by a fierce creative hunger and artistic curiosity, most potently expressed in his many collaborations with visionary producer Brian Eno, but the frontman never seems to become lost in self-satisfied pretensions or inscrutable compositions. Instead, he wields the avant-garde’s torchlight to uncover new ideas and possibilities to be shaped into something human and relatable, albeit through his unmistakably askance lens.
It’s a theme Byrne explores in his latest single, the third from Who Is the Sky? out next month via Matador Records. Byrne and the Ghost Train Orchestra chamber ensemble tackle all manner of existential ponderings that have hit humanity like a ton of bricks across the pandemic-ravaged and politically pummelled last seven years on ‘The Avant Garde’. Naturally, his lyrical musings wander toward dissecting his relationship with the artistic vanguard.
“I like the idea / And the politics too/ But I’m not really sure / If it means that it’s good,” Byrne coos on ‘The Avant Garde’s’ opening verse.
Approaching the topic with hesitations, he almost handles the avant-garde world with cautious tiptoe around its many pitfalls and trappings, doggedly eschewing the seductive beckon that can convince the undisciplined and unaware that their ‘art for art’s sake’ is all marvellously fascinating to the world outside their studio. He’s also seasoned enough to know that taking a giant leap into the unknown may be bold, daring, and undeniably radical, but not necessarily interesting.
“Sometimes, as with anything risky, it doesn’t quite hit the bullseye,” Byrne muses, adding, “There’s no guarantee that it will achieve what it aims to do, but when it does, the emotional and intellectual rewards are worth it.”
He further explains, “That is the risk one takes while making something new and unconventional. So yes, there are times when it doesn’t mean shit, but often there are times when something wholly original comes into being and it’s all worth it.”
It’s a question that every would-be avant-gardist should ask themselves: Does it mean shit? Often, the exercise is the reward. There’s little doubt that Eno and David Bowie’s beloved cut-up lyrical technique, inspired by William Burroughs, went through several drafts before the randomly materialised words throughout 1977’s Low coalesced into something meaningful and engaging. One can also imagine the voluminous amount of outtakes and studio jams destined for the cutting room floor before arriving at Eno and Byrne’s acclaimed My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’ collage grooves.
Byrne interrogates the avant-garde world like a tempestuous sibling who often fights but ultimately loves each other. Above a plethora of self-help books and supposed artistic guides, it’s likely that one listen of Who Is the Sky?’s ‘The Avant Garde’ will yield plenty of advice from its wry lyricism that any eager young radical would be foolish to ignore.
