Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

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Riff OCTOBER 10, 2022 - by David Gill

BRIAN ENO SPACES OUT ON FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE

Not too long ago, my mother, who's in her eighties, read a book by Michael Pollan titled How To Change Your Mind, and was briefly - and not seriously - curious about psychoactive drugs. If she had decided that she wanted to join the throngs of aging straight-lacers blasting off into inner space on a handful of shrooms in some basement office in Berkeley, I'd very much recommend she bring along FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE, the new album by Brian Eno.

I think she'd fare far better listening to the peaceful sonic soundscapes conjured by Eno, one of the most eclectic, eccentric and enigmatic performers and producers in popular music in the last fifty years. FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE is not a rock album. She wouldn't be unsettled by something like Baby's On Fire, from Eno's classic 1974 album, Here Come The Warm Jets, with Eno's derisively sneered vocals. But Eno's latest isn't the full-blown instrumental ambience of Music For Airports or his 2020 collection of film scores.

Instead, Eno seems to have taken a new middle path and found temperate porridge by melding spartan synthesized soundscapes with a new baritone vocal style. Eno has described his new vocal approach as "a different personality I can sing from" and his songs as "more landscapes, but this time with humans in them." Perhaps the closest comparison to Eno's new approach is dream pop vocalist and Breathless frontman Dominic Appleton, who provided rich, syrupy vocals on the classic 4AD album Filigree & Shadow by This Mortal Coil.

Musically, FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE is the sonic equivalent of a warm towel on your face or putting on socks fresh out of the dryer. Synthesized washes of sound churn and swoon in gauzy beauty. Expressionistic soundscapes, like Monet's waterlilies, sit just out of focus. On Give A Thought, instrumental voices resist identification. Is that a guitar or synthesizer? Clearly, Eno's got more important things to think about.

"Who gives a thought about the nematodes? / There isn't time these days / For microscopic worms / Or for unstudied germs / Of no commercial worth," he intones.

On We Let It In, Eno is joined by his daughter Darla on vocals, whose mellifluous voice is juxtaposed with a rhythmic and dragon-like growl. Sherry features cool electric piano with a synthesized cat-like mewling and other surprisingly pleasing and otherworldly musical filigree.

The staticky synths that begin Garden Of Stars are overlain with Gregorian chant-style intonations that sound strangely Auto-Tuned.

"These billion years will end / These billion years will end / These billion years will end / They end in me / They end in me," Eno sings.

Mom would probably need some help to keep her from flipping out for some of this stuff, but as she would undoubtedly learn, you mess with psychedelic bull, you get the rainbow spaghetti horns.