PHOTO BY JODY ROGAC

By Alex Woodward

After one of the best sets of the 2018 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, pop performance artist and Talking Heads founder David Byrne will return for an encore this fall.

Byrne will close out his American Utopia tour at the Saenger Theatre on Oct. 8. Tickets are $49.50-$129.50 and go on sale 9 a.m. Friday, May 18.

As Jazz Fest's first Sunday closing act, Byrne sat barefoot on stage at a small table while holding a plastic brain, addressing the universe with an introduction that glimpsed the curious theater throughout his playful, and often funny, performance.

His band followed — all wearing nearly identical gray suits — with wireless instruments, allowing them to float around stage and in robotic-like movements for Talking Heads classics “Once in a Lifetime” and “Burning Down the House,” among others, alongside newer tracks “Everybody’s Coming To My House" and “Every Day is a Miracle” from his American Utopia. His closing encore was an amended, percussive version of Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talmbout,” a tribute to victims of police violence and a powerful dose of grounding realism from the man with his “feet on the ground, head in the sky.”