David Byrne announced his forthcoming solo record, American Utopia, during a presentation of Reasons To Be Cheerful, an ongoing series curated by Byrne of hopeful writings, photos, music, and lectures. The presentation was given at New York’s New School to a live audience, as well as live-streamed via his Facebook page.  American Utopia will be released on March 9, on Todomundo/Nonesuch Records, accompanied by a world tour that will bring a choreographed concert that Byrne has called “the most ambitious show I’ve done since the shows that were filmed for Stop Making Sense.”

The album track ‘Everybody’s Coming To My House’— co-written with Brian Eno, featuring contributions from TTY, Happa Isaiah Barr (Onyx Collective), Mercury Prize winner Sampha, and others—also was released.

American Utopia fits hand-in-hand with Byrne’s vision for his series Reasons To Be Cheerful, named for the song by the late Ian Dury. Over the last year, Byrne has been collecting stories, news, ideas, and other items that all either embody or identify examples of things that inspire optimism, such as a tech breakthrough, a musical act, a new idea in urban planning or transportation—something seen, heard, or tasted. Just as the album questions the current state of society while offering solace through song, the content of the series recognizes the darkness and complexity of today while showcasing alternatives to the despair that threatens us.

While David Byrne has collaborated on joint releases with Eno, Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim), and most recently St. Vincent over the past decade, American Utopia is Byrne’s first solo album since, 2004’s Grown Backwards, also on Nonesuch. American Utopia morphed during the writing and recording process, beginning with longtime collaborator Eno, and eventually growing to include collaboration with producer Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, King Krule, Sampha, Savages) alongside a diverse cast of creative contributors including Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never), Jam City, Thomas Bartlett (St. Vincent producer, aka Doveman), Jack Peñate, and others. The album was recorded in New York City at David’s home studio, Reservoir Studios, Oscilloscope, XL Studios, and Crowdspacer Studio and in London at Livingston Studio 1.

Speaking about the album, Byrne said: “Is this meant ironically? Is it a joke? Do I mean this seriously? In what way? Am I referring to the past or the future? Is it personal or political? These songs don’t describe an imaginary or possibly impossible place but rather attempt to depict the world we live in now. Many of us, I suspect, are not satisfied with that world—the world we have made for ourselves. We look around and we ask ourselves—well, does it have to be like this? Is there another way? These songs are about that looking and that asking.

This album is indirectly about those aspirational impulses. Sometimes to describe is to reveal, to see other possibilities. To ask a question is to begin the process of looking for an answer. To be descriptive is also to be prescriptive, in a way. The act of asking is a big step. The songs are sincere—the title is not ironic. The title refers not to a specific utopia, but rather to our longing, frustration, aspirations, fears, and hopes regarding what could be possible, what else is possible. The description, the discontent and the desire—I have a feeling that is what these songs touch on.

I have no prescriptions or surefire answers, but I sense that I am not the only one looking and asking, wondering and still holding onto some tiny bit of hope, unwilling to succumb entirely to despair or cynicism. It’s not easy, but music helps. Music is a kind of model—it often tells us or points us toward how we can be.

American Utopia Tracklisting;

I Dance Like This

Gasoline And Dirty Sheets

Every Day Is A Miracle

Dog’s Mind

This Is That

It’s Not Dark Up Here

Bullet

Doing The Right Thing

Everybody’s Coming To My House

Here

Midway through David Byrne’s Meltdown at the Royal Festival Hall in London - a festival that has seen performances ranging from the likes of doom titans Sunn 0))) to the electronic bleeping of Matthew Herbert, via the bombast and opera of Anna Calvi - perma-dishevelled Radiohead polymath, Jonny Greenwood walks onstage with the London Contemporary Orchestra to perform a live soundtrack to a film. The film is 2007s There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson’s horrific document of one psychopath’s obsessive, terrifying journey towards the omphalos of the spewing pipe of black gold in middle America - the oil well.

Alongside Anderson’s meticulous mise-en-scene - a camera scanning across men leaning over maps, steam trains framed in still, symmetrical long-shots out in the desert - the music in There Will Be Blood is integral to the film. Greenwood’s soundtrack is all staccato strings, looming Hitchcockian cello, and the otherworldly whistling of Jonny Greenwood’s ondes Martenot. Without the soundtrack There Will Be Blood would be a bombastic historical drama. With it, it’s a horror film.

It opens with a dialogue-free fifteen minutes as ‘oil man’ Daniel Plainview digs for silver down a mine, hell bent on finding his fortune. He discovers silver ore, but breaks his leg falling down the ladder of the mine as he tries to climb out. Like all horror films villains though, Daniel is relentless, he will never stop. He pulls himself up the ladder, snapped bones scraping against each other to the terrifying swell of violin strings and string plucks, and drags himself to the nearest town. Onstage the strings of the LCO’s fourteen violins heave while Daniel lies on the floor, wincing and scratching a fountain pen over paper, registering his claim. He uses the silver money to set up his first oil well, and as the pipe begins gushing from his first drilling attempt, the orchestra launches into Brahms’ violin concerto in D major. Thus begins the rise of Daniel Plainview.

Two hours into the film and several years later, that gushing oil turns to blood. Plainview is a millionaire recluse, having made his money but lost his mind, drinking whiskey in the private bowling alley in his house. A young acquaintance comes to see him to ask for money. Daniel humiliates him, beats him, then begins smashing his skull with a bowling skittle again and again - the oil that spewed from the earth becoming blood spewing from a human head. The music stops. “I’m finished,” he says to the camera. The film ends and the Brahms concerto begins to play again. The credits roll, and out onstage in the Festival Hall we are treated to virtuoso violinist, Galya Bisengalieva coming front of stage to play lead violin, her bow moving across the instrument like the crackle of lightning on a rod. The first time tonight she played the concerto was when Daniel Plainview founded his first mine. The second time was when he brained a young man with a bowling skittle. Therein lies the title of the film - there will be oil, then there will be blood.