BRIAN ENO: HERE COME THE WARM JETS (1973)
1) Needle In The Camel's Eye;
2) The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch; 3) Baby's On Fire; 4) Cindy Tells Me; 5)
Driving Me Backwards; 6) On Some Faraway Beach; 7) Blank Frank; 8) Dead Finks
Don't Talk; 9) Some Of Them Are Old; 10) Here Come The Warm Jets.
If you dissect Eno's proper debut album into
its integral components and muss over each one separately, you will probably
find nothing new under this particular sun. Brian's chief musical inspiration
in terms of basic melody must have come from the Velvet Underground —
references to the banana LP are in abundance here, and we will mention a few
later on — and his use of crazy-looking and crazier-sounding electronic devices
owes a lot to minimalists, Krauts, and maybe even Keith Emerson. His «affected»
vocals are Marc Bolan and Tiny Tim at the same time, and his lyrics are...
Captain Beefheart, perhaps? Whatever.
None of this prevents Here Come The Warm Jets from still
being one of the most stunning and unusually striking debut albums in
existence, because never before had there been such a brash, exciting, colorful
amalgamation of catchy pop structures, weirdass studio trickery, surrealist
lyrical and sonic imagery, intelligent humor, and heartfelt emotion at the same time. Above and beyond everything
else, this is a pop album — it is
totally accessible to those who have issues with staggering song lengths,
off-putting time signatures, excessive noise, or jarring dissonance — but it is
a pop album created by an experimentalist intellectual pretending to be the
patient of the world's largest nuthouse. And he's got soul, too.
The busily droning three-chord guitars that
usher in ʽNeedle In The Camel's Eyeʼ are exactly midway in between the
Velvets' ʽI'm Waiting For The Manʼ (which had two chords, I believe) and the
Ramones' ʽBlitzkrieg Bopʼ (which also had three), but the accompanying vocal
melody is actually sung rather than recited — in fact, if you dig it out from
under the guitars that keep it buried as if in a tightly sealed sarcophagus,
it's a perfectly catchy vocal melody that would feel right at home on any
Beatles album: "Those who know / They don't let it show / They just give
you one long life and you go...". Hmm, sounds like something Lennon could
write, too. But then there comes this gruff bass solo, and it's like the one on
the Velvets' ʽSunday Morningʼ — and then it makes an unexpected couple of pit
stops, like on King Crimson's ʽSchizoid Manʼ — and then we reprise and fade
away with da-da harmonies — and what you just heard was a relatively simple pop
song, but very bizarrely produced.
It is probably because of the loud distorted
guitars that people sometimes call this a «glam» album — which it certainly is not
if by «glam» we mean «epic rock theater» like Bowie's Ziggy, or even if we just mean «rock'n'roll with a really, really loud and thick guitar sound»,
because the latter does not crop up here too often. But really, it is just for
the lack of a specific term that the word «glam» is used, because Here Come The Warm Jets stubbornly
defies pigeonholization: what is ʽThe Paw Paw Negro Blowtorchʼ, for instance?
Seems to be a blues-pop number with a pubroom attitude and with vaudevillian
vocals — that is, right before two or three synthesizers enter the room and
start chatting with each other about their casual robotic problems of the day,
and it all becomes some sort of a sci-fi freak show, and by the time we get
back to the vocal part, it is too late because the backing guitars have completely
gone off their rocker and now sound as if somebody put 100,000 volts through
them.
The album's got a great feel for dynamic shift,
too — if the first song is (technically) an optimistic anthem, then the second
already moves in the direction of a deranged carnival, and by the time we get
to the third one, the mood has shifted to positively mean: I mean, "Baby's
on fire / Better throw her in the water / Look at her laughing / Like a heifer
to the slaughter" isn't exactly a reassuring view on personal
relationships, and the extended solo by Robert Fripp here is much darker than
his usual work, especially when it starts flashing and wobbling on the lower
strings in an almost Black Sabbathy fashion. On the whole, it's a rare glimpse
inside the «evil» part of Eno's mind, which he usually does not allow free
access into the studio.
Then, once the evil has been properly exorcised,
we get the tender heart of Eno — ʽCindy Tells Meʼ is another throwback to the
Velvets, both in the lyrics ("Cindy tells me the rich girls are
weeping..." — compare "Candy says I've come to hate my body...")
and melody-wise (some of the chord changes are once again reminiscent of
ʽSunday Morningʼ), but there is no misanthropy or reclusiveness here: Eno has a
much more positive view on things than Lou Reed (I mean, even ʽBaby's On Fireʼ
is more like the mock-evil grimacing of a mischievous imp than a blast of the
devil's proper hellfire), and where the Velvets used their atmosphere to sing
about femme fatales and Freudian matters, Eno uses it to sing about the
unforeseen consequences of too much women's lib ("they're saving their
labour for insane reading", "perhaps they'll re-acquire those things
they've all disposed of" — disgusting male chauvinist porn fan).
The show never ceases to amaze — these are just
the four first songs, and then there is the out-of-tune paranoid insanity of
ʽDriving Me Backwardsʼ, the epic piano-and-synth gorgeousness of ʽOn Some
Faraway Beachʼ (presaging the peaks of ambient-pop that would be reached on Another Green World and Before And After Science), the «Bo
Diddley goes New Wave» hooliganry of ʽBlank Frankʼ, the McCartney-esque piano
pop of ʽDead Finks Don't Talkʼ (psychedelic backwards guitars included), the
choral harmonies of ʽSome Of Them Are Oldʼ, and the instrumental title track —
which, as far as I'm concerned, could serve as the blueprint for a staggering
amount of indie-rock creations of the 21st century, with its simple,
repetitive, triumphant synth blare over propulsive tribal beats: British Sea
Power and even Arcade Fire, eat your as-of-yet-unborn heart out, or at least
acknowledge your debts. Not that it is all that easy to acknowledge one's debts
to a song that, according to rumor, surreptitiously glorifies «golden showers»,
but since when has rock music been a stranger to kinky metaphors?
As you might have already guessed, Here Come The Warm Jets is quite a
juicy album, but the thing I like the most about it is that it's really got a
heart — some of the tracks are almost religiously beautiful (ʽFaraway Beachʼ)
or inspiring (those synth blasts on the title track are pretty much welcoming
you to a brand new world), or hilarious (the «chatting robots» on ʽBlowtorchʼ
sound much more human to me than some actual humans from that particular era).
No filler, plenty of creativity, even a touch of spontaneity (achieved by
cramming tons of «incompatible», according to Eno, guest musicians in the
studio), and there you go — one of the best «intelli-pop» albums ever released.
It even managed to chart, very briefly, reaching #26 in the UK, a feat that no
other Eno album managed to repeat (then again, Eno has never cared much for
promotion campaigns, let alone touring). And it actually makes you feel great
about the man's split-up with Roxy Music — which allowed for two masterpieces (this one and Roxy's Stranded) rather than one to be released
the same year. In short, an exuberant thumbs up.
According to Eno, the song title actually refers to the sounds they managed to extract from guitars on that track. But the urban myth is still pretty funny.
ReplyDelete"people sometimes call this a «glam» album — which it certainly is not if by «glam» we mean «epic rock theater»"
ReplyDeleteI think Glam was more about look and feel and presentation and encompassed several styles of music. So to me Eno is obviously gender bending and that falls under the whole "look and feel" aspect I am talking about so it does fall under Glam. I also think you see this same stuff going on in Al Stewart - Year Of The Cat and I always considered that sorta late Glam in some ways.
George, will you review My Squelchy Life? I think it's part of the last Nerve Net Remaster
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's on its own bonus disk. If The Sicilian Defense warranted a review, My Squelchy Life absolutely does.
DeleteI agree with your assessment with the Velvet Underground being an influence, but I think a lot of the material on this album (and his big four as a whole) also owes much to other 60s pop music. The Who and The Move circa 1965 - 1968, the more commercial stuff from the original Mothers Of Invention and Syd Barrett, and The Beach Boys when Brian Wilson was going full throttle in the studio between Today! and The SMiLe Sessions. The ingredients weren't his, but the mixture was certainly unique and satisfying.
ReplyDeleteA very unique, quirky and unpredictable record where you can never correctly guess what's going to pop up next and attack your ears. Hard to say the same about "Ambient 4" now, isn' it?
ReplyDeleteA great album although "Taking Tiger Mountain" works better as a whole and seems more developed as far as songwriting goes.