27 years agone David Byrne of Talking Heads and Brian Eno of everything cool in music since 1973 made My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. Its early sampleology, mixing third gear world ethicity with first base world engineering science and intellectualism, was, to put it simply, i of the most authoritative releases of the terminal 50 age; presaging music's rush into imminent globalism and the blurring of genre boundaries. Reunited, the pair take come up with a completely different beast. Anyone expecting boundaries to be broken here will be sorely foiled. Anyone expecting something intriguingly and sometimes maddeningly infectious will be in fortune.
With a crew of ambient guitar player Leo Abrahams and F-Ire Collective jazz figurehead, drummer Seb Rochford, Everything That Happens Will happen Today is in turns slinky, poppy, shopworn and fantastic. Sometimes all at erst. Described by Byrne as 'Electronic gospel', initial listens put you in mind of the space-age country twangs of Eno's Apollo soundtrack, but with vocals. Yet once you amaze past the foursquareness of some of the arrangements then it's the inside information that get going the neurons firing.
With Byrne intoning over Eno's musical ideas we get the geekiness of Byrne's voice filled to bursting by Eno's trademark dulcet harmonies. Songs like Home and Life Is Long (featuring, shock horror, a brass section) seem simplistic on the surface, thus far repeated plays make them harder and harder to resist. It's just the anticipation of hearing something world-shaking that gets in the way.
There are some blunders. The urban endanger of Feel My Stuff with its skittering forte-piano intro, or Poor Boy seem oddly empty, which is interesting as these are the numbers that most nearly resemble the stuff that made the pair famous.
But for every slightly misjudged step you get something as sweet as Life Is Long or One Fine daylight, which in true Enoesque fashion seems to both resemble some township intone AND a sea shanty.
No, it's not going to change your life. No, it's non remotely up there with the classics. But dammit, it's Eno and Byrne, and it's lovely.
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