David Byrne Covers Lambchop, Verdi On Latest Album
Remain in lite-rock

Legendary Talking Heads frontman (and the man Will Bryant calls the James Lipton of rock, thanks to his stint hosting Sessions at West 54th) David Byrne will release a new album, Grown Backwards, on March 16th. The record features three covers: two arias (one by Georges Bizet, another by Giuseppe Verdi) and "The Man Who Loved Beer" by Nashville indie rockers Lambchop. The vocal talents of showtune queen Rufus Wainwright are featured in duet on Bizet's "Au Fond du Temple Saint."

Always a master arranger, Byrne offers faithful renditions of his opera fare with the help of a Texan chamber group called the Tosca Strings, whom Byrne toured with in 2001. While he achieves an overall mellow tone on the record, Byrne's taste in front-beats (African hand drumming, etc.) is indulged tastefully throughout, along with his penchant for the carnival. On the doo-wop number "The Other Side of This Life," Byrne turns his backup chamber strings into Buddy Holly's Crickets. "The strings do everything that guitar or keyboards would normally do," Byrne explained to Rolling Stone. "The band is a groove thing-- pretty much me, drums, percussion and bass."

Whether experimenting with trip-hop, opera or politics, Byrne's solo work has remained musically interesting. And while his lyrics occasionally stray into the realm of heavy-handed rhetoric, the allegorical tales and straight talk ("I'm glad when the sex is not so great") keep his work interesting to the greatest of the unwashed. Tracklist:

01 Glass, Concrete and Stone
02 The Man Who Loved Beer [Lambchop]
03 Au Fond du Temple Saint [Georges Bizet]
04 Empire
05 Tiny Apocalypse
06 She Only Sleeps
07 Dialog Box
08 The Other Side of This Life
09 Why
10 Pirates
11 Civilization
12 Astronaut
13 Glad
14 Un di Felice, Eterea [Guiseppe Verdi]

David Byrne: http://www.davidbyrne.com