Pitchfork

Though rock has been pronounced dead countless times, it's still a reasonably young artform. Virgin territory is still being forged, as the public continues to observe how artists develop as they wrinkle, grey, and atrophy in popularity. The notion of respectable longevity has mostly been bulldozed with Wings and Steel Wheels, but its main culprits have been cocaine, cash, and circuitry, not backaches and orthopedic pillows. The notion of septuagenarian rockers wets the lips of Leno's writers, but blues musicians-- the Tigris and Euphrates river valley to Mick Jagger's Royal Dutch Shell-- can play to their death, thanks to the genre's acceptance of the stool. The Buena Vista Social Club are older than Arizona, yet their records uniformly win critical raves and record sales. Really, there's no justifiable reason to write off musicians who blow out over 40 candles a year. Music is an artform, right? Painters, writers, architects, driftwood sculptors, and dog groomers can all produce masterworks in late age, so why not rock musicians? Again, the format has not existed long enough to develop patterns and cycles demonstrative of artists' complete lifetimes.

But there has been new hope of late. David Bowie, The Stooges, Robert Plant, Joe Strummer, Wire, Kraftwerk, and The Zombies all contributed vital releases to their discography in the last few years. Naturally, as one ages, the appeal of music written about aging by aging artists becomes vastly more appealing. Even flawed recordings and miscalculated experimentation can charm, as they mirror our own missteps and ability to laugh at our own mistakes. Grown Backwards, as the title suggests, skips whistling into maturity, and employs this concept as its thematic core. Here, endearing for his joyous, occasionally wrong-footed style-hopping, David Byrne gleefully releases himself to fate, both critical and existential, like a man who's breathed in the dust of ceiling tile, cinder, faxes, and bone. He even wears Oshkosh overalls on the back. (Perhaps. They could be Miu Miu.)

If you hold the cover of Grown Backwards before your face at the precise angle, twisting your head to the right slightly, the mirrored finish of its packaging superimposes your visage over David Byrne's remarkably unchanged face. Put the CD down and your fingerprints blemish the gloss with human grease. Intended or not, the album physically reflects and inserts the listener. With its themes centered on the amusing and tragic nuances of seemingly mundane human behavior, Byrne has crafted a personal album for all, confronting us with our greatest fears and flaws-- mainly mortality.

The album's sequencing even parallels a lifecycle: The opening is exciting, naively romantic, and carefree. Like adolescence, tracks four through seven strive awkwardly to follow trends and fit in. Regal trumpet blasts herald a diatribe on American imperialism on the unfittingly political "Empire". And finally, "The Other Side of Life" arrives at adulthood, with arms wide before a Broadway melody. With signature wide-eyed sincerity, Byrne sings, "I don't have any more problems/ All of my worries are gone/ Beautiful angels appear at my side/ And corporate sponsors will act as my guide," dispensing of any sarcasm these lyrics might imply. "Glad" revels in a laundry list of flaws: "I'm glad I got lost/ I'm glad I'm confused/ I'm glad when the sex is not that great/ I'm glad I know how my life will end/ I'm glad I'm a mess," again, with ambiguously sincere delivery. Whether Byrne is mocking the shortcomings of the average man or rejoicing in his own averageness is unclear, but either way, it works.

As the dream journal-like interior package design suggests, Grown Backwards floats in a metropolitan ether, hitting the ears like sensory blasts encountered while walking Manhattan at daybreak. The style shifts seem intentionally influenced by random urban experience, not wanton experimentalism. Opera, hip-hop, the funk of "Dialog Box", the Pacific island breeziness of "Astronaut", the French café gestures of "Civilization", and club grooves come and go like scents, smells, and sights on a cosmopolitan excursion. The album's clean, organic production-- much like the roomy environments recorded by Nick Gold for Byrne's new labelmates Buena Vista and Orchestra Baobab-- help to make possibly jarring style shifts seamless and timeless. Like the Neverland of J.M. Barrie, alluded to on "Pirates", Grown Backwards sounds like a subconscious composite of Byrne's loves, fears, influences, and fantasies.

Demonstrative of the breadth and strength of Byrne's compositions, the album's two masterful high-points, "Au Fond du Temple Saint" and "Lazy", sit on polar opposites. The former, a rendition of Bizet's lusciously melodic duet from The Pearl Fishers, is covered with aplomb alongside Rufus Wainwright, and devastates with juicy beauty. Bizet, who wrote the piece at 24, tells the story of two men who turn their back on a promise from youth with typically sacrificial results, and Byrne fits the brick into his album's Legowork with sophistication. He sings opera, a music now typically reserved for silver aristocrats who subscribe to Smithsonian, but chooses an immortal ode to youth struck dumb by Brahmin beauty, written by an inexperienced composer. While invigorating a dying music with modern zeal, his limitations as a Comique tenor matter little. "Lazy", on the other hand, reworks a dance collaboration with X-Press 2 with awesomely melodramatic strings from the Tosca ensemble, who color the entire album with playful accents, and electric guitar and keyboard from Byrne, which absolutely shames whatever New York newcomers who attempt such styles. It's Morodor disco and CBGB punk, not some cheap hybrid. The song's self-deprecating lyrics, in hindsight, sound like the thematic font for this entire project.

Though David Byrne may sing the part of Bizet's Nadir, this album is anything but. It fits alongside the best of his career and adds another solid release to a solo catalog which will hopefully become more cherished in time. In 20 years, as we straighten our faces with botulism, braces, and stem cells, the album will stand up. "On my high school folder/ I drew a big gorilla/ Something familiar yet something far, far away," Byrne sings. With that last phrase, he could mean the gorilla or youth. As Grown Backwards proves, records need not rely on either for thrills.