David Byrne sets Benedum return with new album 'Who is the Sky?'

By Scott Mervis / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

David Byrne will return to the Benedum Center on Sept. 16, touring behind “Who Is the Sky?,” his first new album since 2018’s “American Utopia.”

Tickets go on sale on Friday at whoisthesky.davidbyrne.com.  Fans can sign up for the artist presale now through 10 p.m. Thursday. 

“Who Is the Sky?,” coming Sept. 5 on Matador Records, was produced by Grammy winner Kid Harpoon (Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus) and features 12 songs arranged by the members of New York-based chamber ensemble Ghost Train Orchestra. The album also includes appearances by St. Vincent, Paramore’s Hayley Williams, The Smile drummer Tom Skinner and American Utopia percussionist Mauro Refosco.

It is preceded by the single “Everybody Laughs,” with a video directed by multimedia artist Gabriel Barcia-Colombo.

“Someone I know said, ‘David, you use the word “everybody” a lot.’ I suppose I do that to give an anthropological view of life in New York as we know it,” Byrne said in a statement. “Everybody lives, dies, laughs, cries, sleeps and stares at the ceiling. Everybody’s wearing everybody else’s shoes, which not everybody does, but I have done. I tried to sing about these things that could be seen as negative in a way balanced by an uplifting feeling from the groove and the melody, especially at the end, when St. Vincent and I are doing a lot of hollering and singing together. Music can do that — hold opposites simultaneously. I realized that when singing with Robyn earlier this year. Her songs are often sad, but the music is joyous.”

The touring band will be comprised of 13 musicians, singers and dancers, including members of the American Utopia band, all of whom will be mobile throughout the set.

Byrne enlisted the 15-member Ghost Train Orchestra — which includes drums, percussion, guitar and bass along with strings, winds and brass — for the record after hearing its 2023 tribute album to the blind New York composer and street poet Moondog.

“I suspected that intimate orchestral arrangements would bring out the emotion I sense is there in these songs,” Byrne said. “It’s something that folks don't always hear in my work, but this time for sure I thought it was there. At the same time, I also see myself as someone who aspires to be accessible. I imagined that Kid Harpoon would help with that, as well as being a set of trusted ears, since there was a lot going on. People think of producers as people who mainly make a record sound good, and Kid Harpoon did that, but he was also aware of how important the storytelling is.”