Review #338: Another Green World, Brian Eno

#338: Another Green World, Brian Eno

Brian Eno walks a weird ambient-punk line that I really dig, so I would love to listen to this one again when I don’t have a splitting headache. (I’m convinced “Sky Saw” was designed to hurt me.)

Eno is crazy prolific, and also loves collabing — check out his stuff with Coldplay, U2, and Damon Albarn. Being well-connected, Eno gets some stars to populate his green world. Phil Collins plays drums over the aforementioned opener and “Over Fire Island.” Robert Fripp of King Crimson (and also Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jets) plays an astonishingly light, complex guitar part on “Golden Hours.” John Cale of the Velvet Underground plays the viola on that one, too.

But when fellow musical geniuses aren’t hanging around, Eno is all by himself, soloing all the instrumentation on songs like “Another Green World” and “Sombre Reptiles,” the latter of which is built around a comfortable Peruvian groove.

We’ve discussed sonic painting before before — it’s when you try to create music that’s evocative of an emotion or ~vibe~, rather than poems with lyrics around them. (See “In Dark Trees” and “Little Fishes” for self-explanatory examples of this.) That’s where this album lives — in the wordless evocations, other than the few eclectic ballads (“St. Elmo’s Fire,” “I’ll Come Running”) that work as the exceptions that prove the rule.

There are several creepy, screechy moments, but by the end Eno has taken us to a more blissful place than we were before. (“Zawinul/Lava,” “Becalmed.”) Finale “Spirits Drifting” recalls some of the creepiness, then lets it go, leaving us all drifting in an Eno-ether. What do you know? My headache is gone.

Other Highlights: “The Big Ship” and “Everything Merges With The Night.”

Fun Fact: This record wasn’t an especially big deal or nothing but it did chart at 24 in New Zealand?

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