The bright white outfit donned by David Byrne as he walked out on stage Friday night at the Queen Elizabeth theatre seemed to perfectly compliment his recently acquired shock of bright white hair.

Some 25 years after his heyday in the Talking Heads, it would be easy to dismiss the still wire-thin Byrne as a post-career pop star looking to relive his glory days – much like many of his contemporaries. Fortunately, Byrne has always been a few steps ahead of his peers.

The sold out show was bristling with energy and originality while still keeping in line with Byrne’s well established signatures.

The show opened to Byrne promising the show would span his career, “skipping the Reagan and Bush eras,” to the uproar of cheers from the generation spanning crowd.

The old Talking Heads hits accompanied songs from his recent work with Brian Eno on 2008’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today flawlessly.

You would think the energy level and emotion would dip in his performance of his post Heads work.

Surprisingly, however, Byrne’s most impassioned performances were for his more recent work. That being said, the energy level never seemed to dip.

Acoustically the show, as expected, was spot on. Byrne’s vocals pierced the rich layers of sound accompanying him with the same pitch-perfect fervour as he did during the Stop Making Sense era.

It wasn’t just the flawless sound or the high energy that Byrne’s seemed to still posses from that seminal live performance; many of the rich visual cues set up on the Queen E’s stage were nods to the past.

Byrne was accompanied by a host of musicians including two percussionists, a trio of back up singers reminiscent of Motown and a dance troupe all who on occasion would make direct visual reference to the performance in Stop Making Sense.

For example, during “Life During Wartime” everyone on stage, Byrne included, began to jog in place in unison to the funk-rock beat; a move any Talking Heads fan would instantly recognize.

The crowd seemed insatiable, storming the stage and using the front row as a makeshift dance floor first during a raucous performance of “Cross Eyed and Painless” and remaining there for the duration of the concert.

They wouldn’t let up even after Byrne’s first encore of “Take me to the River” and “The Great Curve,” prompting a second encore of “Air,” and of course, possibly his greatest hit, “Burning Down the House.” But Byrne still wasn’t done. Even after the lights went dim for a third time, the crowd erupted with cheers in the hopes of a third encore – and Byrne listened, finally ending the performance with a passionate rendition of his latest album’s title track “Everything that Happens.”

It was a perfectly fitting end for the performance, followed by a bow worthy of broadway.

Byrne’s show was a unique audio and visual experience that achieved what so many comeback classic acts fail to do so – an experience that transcends the fame and glory of the act and would stand on its own in any musical generation.

Originally Published in 24 Hours Vancouver. Print version available upon request.