Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

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Boston Globe OCTOBER 31, 2008 - by Tristram Lozaw

BYRNE AND ENO EXPLORE THE SUNNY SIDE

Ambient pioneer Brian Eno and former Talking Heads singer David Byrne finally have a follow-up to their groundbreaking 1981 LP, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. Don't expect more of the same. Everything That Happens Will Happen Today doesn't even try to reprise the duo's seminal mash of ethnographic samples and sermons embedded in the Bush Of Ghosts groove collage.

With Byrne providing lyrics and tunes for Eno's music and arrangements the duo have instead created a sunny collection of "folk-electronic-gospel" songs. Their sonic religion is more warming spiritual atmosphere than Bible-style testifying, with occasional undercurrents of country croons and everyman singalongs shaping Byrne's melodies. This gives the digital album a blithe uplift even when the lyrics veer darker, toward war and car crashes.

The horn blasts of Life Is Long and cosmic strums of My Big Nurse stroll along with a hopeful tunefulness that - like The River - recalls latter-day Heads material. Wanted For Life feels like a Cars track filtered through Eno's quirk-pop.

Repeat listens uncover layers of adventure below the lightness - the trippy, razored edginess of I Feel My Stuff, the muted, healing angles of One Fine Day - as the album moves toward The Lighthouse, its floating cloud of a coda. Once the subtle charms of Everything dig in, the effects are long-lasting.