But the show is hardly sedate: Before launching into “Burning Down the House,” Byrne encouraged the audience to dance (while staying out of the aisles, in deference to the fire marshal). While “American Utopia” is essentially the same production that Byrne toured around the world for much of last year, it is far more suited to a Broadway theater than, say, a festival - in the intimate, seated confines of the Hudson, the staging, sound, colors and sense of movement have no distractions. The show also has a thematic throughline - spawned from the concept that human brains have many more neural connections when we’re babies, which are gradually lost as we age - along with an unexpectedly and uncharacteristically political subtext that unspools as the evening progresses. However, it’s not a greatest-hits set notable by its absence is “Psycho Killer,” which is probably not a song Byrne cares to revisit at this stage of American history. Vincent) and “Toe Jam” (a relatively obscure 2009 song with grime act BPA), and even a Janelle Monae cover. And while the show shares a title with his latest album, songs from it make up less than a quarter of the 21-track setlist, which acts more as a selective career retrospective, reaching all the way back to the Talking Heads’ 1977 debut and spanning crowd-pleasers like “Once in a Lifetime” and “Naïve Melody (This Must Be the Place)” to deeper cuts like “I Should Watch TV” (from his 2012 collaborative album with St.
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