David Byrne at St James

Talk about flashback. There was David Byrne wandering around the back of the St James stage in that herky-jerky way of his.

There was Byrne's shadow cast upon the back wall as his teeth flashed wide on every high-yi-yi-yi note.

There was Byrne sweating hard and looking like a man conducting a stray electric current up his thin frame as his band tore through the Talking Heads art-funk of I Zimbra, Blind, and Once in a Lifetime.

It sure brought back memories of seeing the brilliant Heads in-concert film Stop Making Sense at this very theatre 20 years before. At times, this splendid show was like the digitally enhanced 3D version.

It also expunged the vague recollections of Byrne solo in Auckland last decade, when he was deep into his Latin and World music kick. It was certainly rhythmic but it felt like a grand indulgence.

This show, however, was something else.

A celebration of Byrne's past certainly, though folks wanting all of the Heads' hits might have been disappointed by some omissions. But he didn't have to play Burning Down the House to do just that.

And it certainly was a testament to Byrne's wide world view. He sang in four, possibly five, languages throughout the night. And to cap off, his third and final encore was the Verdi aria Un Di Felice, having earlier reinterpreted songs by Lambchop, Hendrix, Cole Porter, and a tango-hipped song from the Yugoslavian movie Underground.

Funnily enough, the only flat spots were latter-day Heads material, from when they had finally breached the late 1980s pop charts.

But powered by a nine-piece band of sinuous rhythm and percussion section and the Tosca Strings sextet, which did some very nifty things with the serrated riffs of the old Heads songs, the majority of the set pulsed infectiously with Byrne's passion for all of his music.

That took in everything from the inevitable early Heads breakthrough Psycho Killer - now complete with Psycho strings - through to Lazy, a 2002 collaboration with X Press 2, and ended with an opera finale.

No, he hasn't started making sense yet. But Byrne was still absurdly good.