Category: Music Reviews

Playlist July 2005
Lessons from Eno

Brian Eno
‘Another Day on Earth’
Opal/Beat Records, 2005 (BRC-128)

‘Another Day on Earth’ is a big event: the first full record of ‘songs’ to come out under Brian Eno’s name since 1977. As I mentioned in my ‘Playlist’ review of Eno’s ‘Here Come the Warm Jets’, I’m very fond of vocal Eno; but one can understand his decision to give up on pop songs – he felt there was nothing more to be done with them. After twenty-odd years of producing and arranging other people’s songs – and, of course, adding backing and guest vocals from time to time – it looks like pop songs are back in style at Eno’s studio.

On my first listening, I wasn’t convinced that his return to song was a good idea. The contrast between ‘Another Day on Earth’ and old vocal Eno is startling at first: this new record is a lot more pop-y. Eno sounds like OMD sometimes here – the vocal especially, but also the song structures recall the quiet moments of the best old OMD records. I suspect that comparing Brian Eno to Andy McCluskey doesn’t sound flattering, but it’s not meant as a criticism. There’s a quiet dignity in ‘Another Day on Earth’ that serves its subject matter well. If it’s pop, it’s still Eno-pop: never quite what pop songs usually are. The whole record sounds hauntingly familiar, but in the end it’s impossible to limit the music to anything specific. This shows that Eno has crafted a pop album related to its time, but with a powerful individual character.

‘This’ – the opening track – is (more or less) a three minute pop song. Its simple melody and repeating lyric become very comfortable after a couple of listenings, and it’s a pleasant tune to be stuck in your head; even after the music is gone, the memory of it makes a fine match with the cicadas and construction noise in the summer world outside. That’s the key to this record: its relationship with the everyday world just beyond the window. My impression of Eno has been that he works more with atmosphere than with experience; his songs and ambient pieces were about mood and analysis, rather than being pictures drawn from life. But perhaps that was wrong – or perhaps Eno has grown beyond the ‘hard’ intellectual approach. From the gentle praise song ‘This’, to the delicate observations in ‘How Many Worlds’ and ‘Just Another Day’, this new album is closely connected to the currents of everyday life.

Vocal treatments are the main attraction on this record: not just what Eno sings, but how he’s chosen to integrate the vocal and instrumental parts of the music. ‘And Then So Clear’ features a machine-enhanced falsetto that sounds like a countertenor; ‘Passing Over’ has a warm, rich chorus followed by Kraftwerk-robotic treatments – but, as in Kraftwerk, you can still make out the voice behind the treatment. Eno’s magic is that he can bring human warmth and presence even to manipulated vocals. The voice on ‘Bottomliners’ is a good illustration of this: it usually sounds like treated vocals are running through a machine, but here Eno is clearly harmonising with the machine.

So we come to our ‘lessons from Eno’ for today – because listening to his records over and over again always teaches us something. I take three main points from ‘Another Day on Earth’: focus concern in the right places, and be careful not to distract your audience with unnecessary things; don’t settle for what you did before, but – just as important – don’t throw out what proved effective; and always remember the humanity in what you do.

–CR, 26 July 2005

26 July 2005