BRIAN ENO: ANOTHER DAY ON EARTH (2005)
1) This; 2) And Then So Clear;
3) A Long Way Down; 4) Going Unconscious; 5) Caught Between; 6) Passing Over;
7) How Many Worlds; 8) Bottomliners; 9) Just Another Day; 10) Under; 11) Bone
Bomb.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it; if it done got
broke — for goodness' sake, just replace
it already. All of Eno's half-hearted attempts to make bits of vocal pop music
past the Seventies, be it with Cale, Schwalm, or anybody else, were
incomparable in quality to the classic era; so why, after all this time, once
again return to the vocal format, and this time, for an entire album? This
attempt was simply bound to be half-hearted again, and it is.
Tucking some modern rhythms behind his belt,
enlisting the help of some proverbially progressive stars, and alternating
between sung, spoken, mumbled, and jumbled vocals, Brian here gives us an album
that is both ambient and pop at the
same time — or, rather, one that is neither ambient nor pop. Essentially, it's
a platter of moody mush that presents itself as something much more deep than
it really is, and also contains some really bad sonic decisions, such as the
frequent use of Autotune to transform Eno's normally handsome vocals into the
last sounds of a rapidly melting Wicked Robot of the West.
Saddest of all, Another Day On Earth shows that Eno totally lost the capacity to
amaze — now, when he is generating pop music, he is just generating pop music. It's not as if ʽThisʼ were a bad song,
but it just sounds like any other semi-decent New Wave and later art-pop song.
The drum machines are openly crappy (oh, where are those happy days when studio
technology and organic Phil Collins could join in bliss and ecstasy on an
opening track?), but much worse is the hidden
crap effect, when the song is over and you realize that you don't remember
anything about it except that, uh, it was... kind of happy-sounding and
peaceful.
Or maybe this entire album is just a bit too
happy-sounding and peaceful. See, when you combine faint pop hooks with friendly
ambient soundscapes and meditative disposition, there's always a danger of
losing focus, of drifting apart in your own mellowness. It's one thing when you
are directly producing a stereotypical ambient album — it's totally another
when you are using ambience as a support for a «song», because then you get
something like ʽA Long Way Downʼ, which is neither here nor there: as an
ambient piece, it is let down by the inclusion of vocals, but as a vocal piece,
it suffers from melodic minimalism. Like, would those Harold Budd
collaborations have been better if Eno thought they needed vocal overdubs?
Probably not, or he would have added those overdubs. Then why make that mistake
here?
In the middle of the album, we unexpectedly get
an almost upbeat, McCartney-esque pop ballad (ʽHow Many Worldsʼ), riding on a
simple acoustic guitar riff and sporting unusually pathetic lyrics for Eno; I
would have thought that lines like "our little world turning in the
blue" would be way below his usual level of acceptance, but there you go —
actually, the credits state that the lyrics were co-written with Michel Faber,
the Dutch writer, and I sure hope he writes better novels than he does poetry.
Anyway, it's kind of pretty, but it's also kind of childish: where in the past
Eno had this knack for finding minimalist melodies that sounded like they were
telling you The Lost Chord Truth of the universe, ʽHow Many Worldsʼ seems
poised for a Sesame Street
soundtrack. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, but then offer it for a Sesame Street soundtrack, goddammit, not your long-awaited «pop
comeback».
ʽJust Another Dayʼ, arriving near the end of
the album, tries to somehow summarize it all and present a stately finale, and
it's decent — with Brian using his imposing lower range on a basic vocal hook
that, in a typical Eno manner, tries to marry the macrocosmically grand with
the utmost in simplicity. Decent, but not devastating: just like the song
tries to convince us that "that was just another day on Earth", so is
the song itself "just another song", celebrating Eno's gift for
serenity and bliss in a routinely manner. After all, the music behind all this
is just another mix of humming electronic textures, isn't it? And the
percussion is dreadful.
The one really
weird song on the album is ʽBone Bombʼ, serving here as a totally unexpected
afterthought-style appendix — a series of bass and keyboard pulses, over which
a vocally desensitized lady with a Laurie Anderson flair (not Laurie Anderson,
though) piles up strings of free-form poetry, as if from the point of view of a
suicidal terrorist ("bone bomb" is apparently a technical term for a
suicide bomber whose own bones serve as lethal projectiles). Predictably, it's
kind of creepy, although the subject matter is masked well enough for most
people not to take notice. And even though the track is not pop at all, and
even though I am not generally a fan of this kind of pretentious
pseudo-shocking Relevant Art, I find myself strangely wishing that Another Day On Earth contained more of
the same, instead of generally relying on that safe, cuddly, no longer all that
interesting sound.
The sad truth is that the days on which Eno
released albums like Another Green World
and Before And After Science were
not «just another day on Earth» kind of days — they were really special days
with special musical events. We may, of course, simply agree with the artist
that these days are gone for ever, and now every new day is just another day,
regardless of whether you find a new Brian Eno record waiting for you or not.
But if so, I don't think I want to be explicitly told about it; I sort of know
it already, you know. Disappointing.
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ReplyDeleteI happen to disagree with your evaluation rather strongly. While surely not a masterpiece, it's a good album, full of memorable melodies and tasteful (albeit somewhat weird) arrangements. This, Under, Caught Between, How Many Worlds, Just Another Day are solid, memorable songs with well-defined hooks. It definitely took me some time to adjust to the [initially rather annoying] semi-ambient sound and Eno's vocals on this one; still, all said and done, it seldom left my mp3 player back in the 2005-early 2006. Needless to say, it sounds nothing like 70's Eno albums, but that was hardly unexpected.
ReplyDeleteThe thin melodies wouldn't be an issue if the arrangements sounded like anything but [i]mere[/i] synthesizers. These songs feel like empty picture frames, as if Eno wrote them specifically to showcase all the wonderful impressions he could give through sheer atmosphere but somehow forgot to actually put it in.
ReplyDeleteD'oh! Wrong markup!
DeleteI'm with Ilya, I find this a tremendously beautiful and moving album. A lot of great guitar work also. "Under" is probably my favorite track.
ReplyDeleteI remember your old review of 'Bloodflowers', that part about "Last Day Of Summer" and the difference between what's on paper and on the actual record. To me, the same applies to the title track here. Somehow.
ReplyDelete