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Photo © Mark Tusk 2007

Could it be that David Byrne has done all the cool things left to do already?

The former Talking Heads frontman/solo star/musicologist/cultural critic/PowerPoint junkie certainly has enough impressive stuff to his credit to last a few lifetimes, but a lot of his new projects sound, well, a lot like his old stuff. Let's have a look, shall we?

First up is the next in Byrne's Playing the Building series, which finds the master musician retrofitting the long-abandoned Battery Maritime Building on the southern tip of Manhattan with mechanical devices in order to turn the place into a "giant musical instrument." According to Byrne, "mechanical devices are attached to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, and the infrastructure, and are used to make these elements vibrate, resonate, and oscillate"-- thus turning the former depot for Brooklyn-bound ferries into one huge sonic wonderland.

Each and every weekend from May 31 to August 10, the building will be open to the public to come jam, free of charge. Amazing stuff? Oh, for sure. It's just that the guy did much the same thing in Stockholm a couple years ago. If you've seen one giant resonant building, you've seen 'em all, you know?

Then there's Byrne's plan to release a studio album version of Here Lies Love, the song cycle about former Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos that he whipped up in conjunction with, uh, Fatboy Slim. We'd make a gag, except we already had a laugh some years back when Byrne announced the project's existence. No word just yet on when that album will turn up, but "many many special musical guests" are promised.

There's also the recent news that Byrne and Brian Eno have re-teamed for a follow-up of sorts to 1981's landmark My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. This, by its very nature, is treading familiar territory (not that we aren't dying of anticipation over here). And Byrne plans to share some of the new material on a tour without Eno sometime this fall. And to top it off, Byrne is also planning to play some of that old Talking Heads stuff on tour.

Okay, we kid, because we love. Besides, there are a few new ones right here: Byrne's soundtrack work on the HBO Mormon drama "Big Love" will emerge on a record called Big Love: Hymnal sometime in the not-too-distant future. And Byrne will head on down to Zilker Park for the Austin City Limits bash way off in September, presumably with plenty of new stuff to show for himself. I mean, it's David Byrne; even when he's repeating himself, he's still light years beyond most of ya'll suckers.