As the speculation of a Talking Heads reunion ran especially high back in June, the band officially nodded to its 50^th anniversary by releasing an honorary video for its pulsing, breakthrough classic, “Psycho Killer.” Meanwhile, a different kind of reunion tour was already in place, hitting in summer, featuring former Heads, Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew. Reviving their successful Remain In Light outing from a few years back, the pair assembled, once again, a whip-crack ensemble, loaded a setlist with Talking Heads faves and deeper cuts, and then gifted this spectacular, 95-minute performance to Rhode Island’s capital city, among other stops, on a limited East Coast trek.

The Strand theatre was an air-conditioned, downtown oasis for Talking Heads fans on a sweltering Tuesday in the last week of July. Yet, even in the comforting cool, Harrison and Belew and their nine-piece cohort cranked up the mercury onstage. Either as a wink or simply because it’s a prime starter, they opened the evening’s incandescence with “Psycho Killer,” immediately pulling and keeping the Providence throng up on its feet. 

While the 1980 album, Remain in Light, remains, appropriately, as the focal point and inspiration for the show, itself, the set- with five from the record- wasn’t in strict devotion. Too, they nodded almost as much to Light’s predecessor, Fear of Music, salting in four tracks from that influential disc, as well. The first of which, “I Zimbra,” came early, with a raucous and precise percussion run at its conclusion, leading, as the heat went up inside the gilded hall, to the cycling “Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On).” And the heat goes on, and the heat goes on.

Bright and brilliant it went, as Harrison, volleying between guitar and keyboards, and Belew, on guitar, handled well many of the vocals synonymous with head Head, David Byrne. Truthfully, even up against a comparison to Byrne’s inimitable, idiosyncratic style, their delivery, inflection, and spirit were lovingly in-step, ganged up on at times by the battery of the voices lining the Strand stage, corner to corner. As for Belew’s equally inimitable, idiosyncratic guitar work, it was as compelling as ever.

As if dancing with a serpent, Belew’s physical dalliances with his instrument are almost as engaging as the sonic wonders he conjures out of it. The red-shoed six-stringer has been perplexing ears for decades, pleasing bosses like Bowie and Zappa and Fripp. No doubt, the mid-show sidebar of King Crimson’s “Thela Hun Ginjeet,” served as a cap-tip to Belew’s vast vocabulary away from the Talking. 

Key to Remain in Light’s success are those flights of improvisation. Though the setlist, essentially, is locked-in from night to night, it is the freedom of both Belew and Harrison- and a few of their featured players- to express themselves in the moment that offer a critical element of the uncertain. Whether on a frenetic, barely contained “Cities,” or on the pop-leaning “Rev It Up” hit from Harrison’s solo bag, or the immortally grooving “Once In A Lifetime,” credit the reverently irreverent musicianship within the structure- the boundless jaunts within the boundaries- for cultivating and executing a show of undeniable fun and, as importantly, continuing relevance.

Riding a tempo firing faster than anything before it, the eleven tore through a final sprint of “The Great Curve.” Sure, there are those that would love to see a Talking Heads reunion onstage, if for nothing else than the idea of it. Yet, for more than sentiment, to hear (and fear) this music as it remains in light, in heat, affecting, effective, and even revolutionary, 45 years later, this must be the place.