Music Arcades: David Byrne: Look into the Eyeball

There are some albums that you don't think you remember, but when you put them on, it all comes flooding back. Then there are others where you half wonder whether you ever listened to them. I think I gave Look into the Eyeball a handful of chances back in 2001, but the main memory it holds for me is of seeing David Byrne in the Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, while on my West Coast holiday, ten days or so before I bought this CD in Seattle.

I hadn't known Byrne would be in town when I arrived in Vancouver, and tickets were close to sold out. It was on a Sunday, I remember, 27th May, The venue was only a couple of blocks from my hotel on Howe Street, but by the time I got there, an hour or two before doors were due to open, the queue was already hundreds strong. Judging it would round off the whole holiday experience, I decided to take a risk on buying a ticket from a tout — something I've never done before or since. I started to have doubts when I noticed my ticket was a different colour to everyone else's, but it got me in — and I found a good spot, too, near the front of the very springy dancefloor. Other trivia I recall: it was the first time I noticed a band playing with those earplug monitors, a very tight band, as you'd expect. After the first couple of songs I thought this might be shaping up as one of the classic gigs I'd carry with me for the rest of my life… but it didn't.

A couple of weeks ago, thanks to Guy, I saw David Byrne being interviewed by Paul Morley after a showing of his new live film Ride, Rise, Roar. The obvious question was, How do you make a film that's obviously destined to be compared to a milestone like Stop Making Sense? Byrne's answer included referring to SMS as an albatross.

The film's not bad, and neither is this album. But the best songs in RRR are those that are also in SMS, and the shadow cast by its precedents eclipses Look into the Eyeball in memory.