Album Review: David Byrne - American Utopia

While this is the former head of Talking Heads' first album with just his name on the marquee in over a decade, he's hardly been idle.

Film and theatre projects, and notably the idiosyncratic brass-band Love This Giant album with St Vincent, which has set some of the groundwork for both her towering Masseduction and this American Utopia set.

But while his identifiable voice now has a little rasp of age to it, there's still some subtlety playing off against that seemingly distracted tone; with the occasional whoop and chirp that long-termers will find a touchstone to earlier days. Songs like Every Day Is A Miracle and the deceptively bright Everybody's Coming To My House suggest an almost relentlessly positive attitude, although the album title might have some irony to it.

His previous flirtations with various world music styles also comes through: It's Not Dark Up Here having both samba accents and more eastern rhythms in the undergrowth. There's also some electronic textures seeping in, marking input from an easily natural partnership between Byrne and the singular Brian Eno. It's a bunch of seemingly disparate influences and elements that make American Utopia one of those albums in which you'll keep finding new things.