DAVID BYRNE 'AMIEVER GOING TO GET THIS FIGURED OUT?'

David Byrne strolls into his downtown Manhattan office around noon and promptly removes all of his footwear.

- SIMON VOZICK-LEVINSON

He’s been in this prewar building only for a few months, but it’s already unmistakably his own, looking as much like a work space as it does like a museum of the unusual items he’s collected throughout his decades as one of pop’s most curious minds. Meticulously organised metal shelving lines one long wall full of music books, art books, history books and enough DVDs to put the Criterion Closet to shame. An Oscar, a Grammy and an MTV Video Music Award are positioned unobtrusively among kitschy treasures like an ancient can of macadamia nuts with Spam and a cassette of a speech by Bob Dole. “It took a while before everything was up and on the bookshelves,” he says. “But once that happened, it was like, ‘OK, we’re home again.”

Not long after we finish talking, Byrne will head into rehearsals for a 50-date North American tour in support of his excellent new album, Who Is the Sky? At 73 years old, he’s as full of restless energy as ever, eager to talk about the creative process behind this album, which he made with Top 40 producer Kid Harpoon, or about his recent onstage collaborations with stars like Olivia Rodrigo. He’s also well aware that much of the world would rather see him perform with Talking Heads, the peerlessly inventive rock group he led with bass player Tina Weymouth, drummer Chris Frantz, and multi-instrumentalist Jerry Harrison before splitting under less-than-friendly circumstances in 1991. Byrne has built an impressively flexible solo career since then, making catchy and fascinating records with a widely varied cast of collaborators and selling out hundreds of nights on Broadway with his 2019 American Utopia show. But none of those triumphs got the public more excited than the promotional appearances he made last year with Weymouth, Frantz and Harrison for an A24 rerelease of Stop Making Sense, the 1984 concert film that is in many ways Talking Heads’ magnum opus.