After decades of pushing the boundaries of how pop music (and music in general) can be defined, David Byrne and Brian Eno have performed the only shock maneuver remaining to them: turning tail and running from the avant-garde.
From the simple album opener “Home” to the bouncy strains of “My Big Nurse,” to the repetitive ballad “The River,” on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, the duo’s first collaboration since 1981’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Byrne and Eno seem desperate to make an electronic-folk-gospel album that will surprise everyone with its twists on traditional American tropes. Unfortunately, their idea of said tropes is generally flavorless, a good enough reason for them to have stayed away all these years.
Almost every song abuses the use of major keys and whole notes, sustaining a plodding tempo that wears out its welcome long before the album’s end. “My Big Nurse” has the same Sesame Street sing-along quality as Nick Cave’s “Death is Not the End” (as with Cave, one half expects Byrne to cheerfully shout out the next line before he sings it), but without dark, clever lyrics to undercut the kitsch. Over Eno’s recycled backing tracks, Byrne labors to sustain those whole notes, sounding alternately like a poor imitation of Bowie, an ailing Thom Yorke and, most often, a tired David Byrne just struggling to finish in one piece.
These issues are compounded by Byrne’s lyrics, which range from un-offensively abstract to downright embarrassing. When he deadpans “this groove is out of fashion/ these beats are 20 years old,” it’s supposed to be ironic, but the response he elicits is more in the neighborhood of “you said it, not me.” Farther down the list, lines like “When the past becomes the now/ when the lost becomes the found/ when we fall in love with war/ when the angel fucks the whore” make Conor Oberst’s ill-advised ventures into quasi-spiritual end times philosophy look like The Book of Revelations.
Eno’s music is problematic as well. When, on occasion, he eschews strummed folk tunes for the fully electronic sounds he’s respected for, they come out relentlessly safe and sunny, almost as if he’s gone back in time to the 1980s and decided to sound less like Brian Eno and more like A-ha. This can be fun, even catchy, but it’s bound to disappoint fans hungry for more esoteric evolutions.
To be fair, a few standout songs have touches worthy of Byrne and Eno’s legacies. The oscillating low notes on “Wanted For Life” sound like they’re emitting from an underground lake on another planet, and the dissonant piano intro on “I Feel My Stuff,” combined with an incongruous Native American melody and alien samples draped over a menacing beat, makes the song satisfyingly disorienting. When Byrne obsessively repeats, “look away/ look away/ look away/ oh yeah,” the demented charm he exhibited all those years ago on “Psycho Killer” even shines through. However, that track ends up sounding inordinately influenced by Amnesiac-era Radiohead: the past, ripping off the present, ripping off the past. This is not necessarily a pitfall; judging by the track’s success, perhaps Byrne and Eno would do well to continue mining their successors for cues on how to make intelligent music accessible to the mainstream without sacrificing too much. Until then, they will retain a tenuous hold on their avant-pop crowns.
From the simple album opener “Home” to the bouncy strains of “My Big Nurse,” to the repetitive ballad “The River,” on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, the duo’s first collaboration since 1981’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Byrne and Eno seem desperate to make an electronic-folk-gospel album that will surprise everyone with its twists on traditional American tropes. Unfortunately, their idea of said tropes is generally flavorless, a good enough reason for them to have stayed away all these years.
Almost every song abuses the use of major keys and whole notes, sustaining a plodding tempo that wears out its welcome long before the album’s end. “My Big Nurse” has the same Sesame Street sing-along quality as Nick Cave’s “Death is Not the End” (as with Cave, one half expects Byrne to cheerfully shout out the next line before he sings it), but without dark, clever lyrics to undercut the kitsch. Over Eno’s recycled backing tracks, Byrne labors to sustain those whole notes, sounding alternately like a poor imitation of Bowie, an ailing Thom Yorke and, most often, a tired David Byrne just struggling to finish in one piece.
These issues are compounded by Byrne’s lyrics, which range from un-offensively abstract to downright embarrassing. When he deadpans “this groove is out of fashion/ these beats are 20 years old,” it’s supposed to be ironic, but the response he elicits is more in the neighborhood of “you said it, not me.” Farther down the list, lines like “When the past becomes the now/ when the lost becomes the found/ when we fall in love with war/ when the angel fucks the whore” make Conor Oberst’s ill-advised ventures into quasi-spiritual end times philosophy look like The Book of Revelations.
Eno’s music is problematic as well. When, on occasion, he eschews strummed folk tunes for the fully electronic sounds he’s respected for, they come out relentlessly safe and sunny, almost as if he’s gone back in time to the 1980s and decided to sound less like Brian Eno and more like A-ha. This can be fun, even catchy, but it’s bound to disappoint fans hungry for more esoteric evolutions.
To be fair, a few standout songs have touches worthy of Byrne and Eno’s legacies. The oscillating low notes on “Wanted For Life” sound like they’re emitting from an underground lake on another planet, and the dissonant piano intro on “I Feel My Stuff,” combined with an incongruous Native American melody and alien samples draped over a menacing beat, makes the song satisfyingly disorienting. When Byrne obsessively repeats, “look away/ look away/ look away/ oh yeah,” the demented charm he exhibited all those years ago on “Psycho Killer” even shines through. However, that track ends up sounding inordinately influenced by Amnesiac-era Radiohead: the past, ripping off the present, ripping off the past. This is not necessarily a pitfall; judging by the track’s success, perhaps Byrne and Eno would do well to continue mining their successors for cues on how to make intelligent music accessible to the mainstream without sacrificing too much. Until then, they will retain a tenuous hold on their avant-pop crowns.
