David Byrne paused after opening his concert at the Dolby Theatre on Thursday with a gorgeous rendition of the Talking Heads‘ “Heaven,” and delivered what in hindsight was his thesis for the first of two nights in Hollywood.

“Not that long ago, I read an interview with the actor and director John Cameron Mitchell who said that – I’m paraphrasing here – he said that love and kindness are the most punk things you can do right now,” Byrne said.

“I didn’t see the connection really,” he continued as the cheers that greeted Byrne’s first Los Angeles show in seven years finally died down. “And then I sort of understood. Yes. Those things, love and kindness, are a form of resistance.”

Cast in that light, the 21 songs performed over an hour and 45 minutes – half of them Talking Heads‘ classics – created a life-affirming show filled with music and theater and a big-hearted love for uncertain times.

“Heaven” kicked off the night with hints of all that would follow. The arrangement – Byrne singing backed by violin, cello and percussion – was gorgeous. But the staging here and throughout the night elevated each individual number.

The American Utopia Tour saw Byrne dismantle the traditional rock concert set-up. Only musicians and instruments appeared on stage, all the amps and cords and equipment that’s normally there was hidden behind screens, creating a bare stage filled only with musicians and their instruments.

That 2018 production featured muted tones both in its visuals and in the matching gray suits worn by everyone in the show. Unsurprisingly, the tour ended up running on Broadway with a Spike Lee-directed version airing on HBO two years later.

Now, Byrne’s Who Is The Sky? tour uses that same physical box of the stage and fills it with a rainbow of colorful visuals. Byrne and the Ghost Train Orchestra wear matching suits, shirts and shoes all in an electric blue hue.

Video screens on three sides of the stage and its floor create an almost 3-D effect as if Byrne and the band are characters beamed into short films for each song.

In “Heaven, the floor of the stage appeared as the surface of the moon, and as the song unfolded, the blackness of space on the screens slowly revealed the rising blue orb of our planet Earth.

“Everyone Laughs,” one of five songs from “Who Is The Sky?” performed on Thursday, with the blue-clad musicians – as many as 13 with Byrne depending on the song – came and went through entrances hidden on either side of the stage.

Byrne talked often with the audience. In high school in Baltimore, he’d noticed a girl who always seemed happy, he told the audience at one point. He asked her secret. She told him she liked to go to the Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink factory, lie on the grass and take LSD.

“And She Was,” the Talking Heads song inspired by the encounter, followed, with the ensemble marching over a floor of video grass as images of a suburban neighborhood surrounded everyone.

Deeper cuts drew big cheers from the crowd. “Strange Overtones,” a track from Byrne and Brian Eno’s 1981 collaboration “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts,” featured a fantastic bassline from Kely Pinheiro, who also played cello on some songs.

“Houses in Motion,” from Talking Heads‘ 1980 album “Remain In Light,” served deep funk beats and polyrhythms so irresistible that some fans in the formal-seeming theater finally got the courage to stand and dance.

Other highlights of the first half of the show included a pair of Talking Heads’ loveliest melodies, “(Nothing But) Flowers” and “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” the latter of which had even more in the audience on their feet to sing along to its wistful lyrics and achingly gorgeous music.

A pair of songs from the new record, “What Is the Reason for It?” and “Don’t Be Like That” led to “Slippery People,” another of the Heads’ great dance songs. Byrne introduced actor-musician Fred Armisen, outfitted in the official blue outfit, as “the newest member of our band,” and this time, when the dancing got going, the mezzanine started to literally bounce up and down.

The pandemic clearly affected Byrne deeply, as evidenced by his introduction to the new album’s “My Apartment Is My Friend.”

“I lived here alone during the pandemic,” he told the audience as the screens behind him filled with a surround view of the interior of his New York City apartment. “I did OK. I did a lot of drawings. I learned to make some Indian dishes and some Mexican dishes. Some of them came out pretty well, thank you.

“I went out to get groceries as we had to do, and I saw a woman throwing potatoes at another woman,” Byrne continued. “I realized not everyone is handling this the same way that I do. No fault of hers, but I realized maybe I’m lucky. Maybe my apartment is, well, maybe my apartment is this safe haven, a place where I’m comfortable.

“Where I feel like, OK, I know this place. And I wondered, can we love a place like we do a person?

The song answers that question with a clear yes, and the performance – the video walls and floor slowly rotating faster and faster as Byrne and the band performed – was another dizzying highlight.

The main set wrapped up with one iconic Talking Heads song after another. “Psycho Killer” opened with Byrne walking across the stage, a spotlight illuminating his shadow on the rear screen, before his shadow turned and stalked him. Spotlights illuminated Byrne and the musicians on stage from below each of them, gliding beneath as they moved in a way that enhanced the already ominous mood of the song.

“Life During Wartime” only gets more potent as the years pass; its imagined civil uprising and authoritarian uprisings more relevant. When, for the final verses, the screens shifted to scenes of ICE agents throwing civilians to the ground as they arrested them in Los Angeles and other cities, and protesters for causes including fair treatment of immigrants and civilians in the Gaza Strip, the audience roared loudly.

The main set ended with “Once In a Lifetime,” which brought the last seated holdouts in the Dolby to their feet, singing its, “same as it ever was” chorus and dancing.

For the encore, Byrne and the orchestra played a new arrangement of “Everybody’s Coming to My House” for 2018’s “American Utopia,” its arrangement changed to emphasize a gospel sound punctuated by handclaps.

Then it all wrapped up with “Burnin’ Down the House,” which, honestly proved that the Dolby will do just fine in a major earthquake, so great was the up-and-down movement of the floor beneath our feet.

“Hold tight, wait ’til the party’s over,” we all sang. “Hold tight, we’re in for nasty weather. There has got to be a way.”