Who Is The Sky?

About

David Byrne’s last album, 2018’s <i>American Utopia</i>, wasn’t merely an album: It was a sprawling multimedia work that encompassed music, a stage show, and a film that captured the magic of its performance. In fact, it was so sprawling that its chronology even includes a lengthy period of dormancy, between opening on Broadway at the end of 2019 and restarting in 2021 after COVID restrictions were eased. “During the pandemic, of course, I wanted to write new song, but I felt like what was happening was bigger than anything I could write about,” Byrne tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe of that unexpected gap. “And I didn’t quite know how to address it.” While the songs that make up his eighth album under his given name, <i>Who Is the Sky?</i>, recorded with the musically elastic Ghost Train Orchestra, aren’t directly a product of that time, there are threads and themes that trace back to it. “I realized that some of these new songs are coming out of that,” he add. The most obvious is probably the ode to his living quarters “My Apartment Is My Friend,” where Byrne ruminates on how intimate that physical space has become. "So forgive me if I hesitate, if a tear comes now and then,” he sing. “You stood by me when darkness fell/My apartment is my friend.” .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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